MxMIndia

Tag: Prabhakar Mundkur

  • The Lux soap advertisement showcased the glamour of the female star in Indian cinema. But whose soap is it now, ask Prabhakar Mundkur

    The Lux-Santoor Melodrama

     

    By Prabhakar Mundkur

     

    A week ago, The Times of India flashed a provocative headline “Has Santoor overtaken Lux as India’s No 2 brand?”. At first, I couldn’t make sense of it.  Because of the sentence construction. I thought to myself while reading it “Has Santoor overtaken Lux as India’s No 1 brand?” would have been a clearer headline making the point definitively that Santoor is the largest soap brand now in the country (for whatever reason).  The same article later on went on to say that according to Nielsen data for the quarter Jan-March 2018 Lux has a value market share of 13.4 % while Santoor has a market share of 9%.

     

    That to me sounded like it was inconsistent with the misleading headline which was perhaps put there for some sensational reporting on the soap market.

     

    Admittedly, Lux may have suffered losses in market share because I handled the brand in India in the 90s and its market share was around 19-20%. The market was around 400,000 tonnesaround at that time. Now it is expected to be closer to 600,000 tonnes. Which means that Lux has declined in a market that has grown over the last 25 years or so. However, whether Santoor is bigger than Lux, was a fact not adequately supported in The Times of India article.

     

    In any case, more than the Times of India article it was a celebration on social media from the people who belonged to the ad agency (FCB-Ulka) that had handled it for the longest period of time of about 25 years.  The tragic part of the entire mass media and social media sensationalism was that Santoor is not handled by FCB-Ulka anymore. In fact, the account is handled by ADK Fortune.  And kudos to ADK Fortune for being the agency when Santoor reached this historic milestone, that is if it did.

     

    As far as Lux is concerned, it is a well-known fact that the brand has historically been milked by Unilever in every part of the world.  In a book by John Philip Jones called “Does it pay to Advertise?”, Professor Jones had lamented on the decline of this great brand called Lux from a global market share of 33% once upon a time to under double-digit share in most markets at the time of his writing the book.

     

    The Star Relationship Programme on Lux

    In many ways, India was perhaps the last bastion of Lux.  Once upon a time, before we knew words like ‘relationship management’ and ‘direct marketing’ in the 1980s, the team on Lux would handle a regular relationship building program with about 200 film stars in the country.  The team handling the brand would be in regular touch with the stars, sending them birthday cards and flowers on their birthdays and arranging for photo sessions with the late photographer of repute, Gautam Rajyadhaksha who once said that every Lux campaign was Unilever acknowledging that you had become a star and the star in turn saying a thank you to Lux.

     

    An outside consultant who had spent his entire career in the film industry and had an excellent relationship with Hollywood stars would make regular visits to meet them. He was the chief of PR with stars. As a result, most stars considered it a privilege to be featured in a Lux print ad or film and would do it for free or perhaps sometimes for just a nominal fee. These were the golden days of Lux. They thought of Lux as furthering their image and publicity in the media and therefore a step up the Bollywood ladder of fame. So, it was truly the soap of the stars, rather than the soap of Kareena Kapoor for just a year which is where the brand is now.  In fact, the Lux teams used to shoot at least 12 Lux films a year with a dozen different stars, many of them regional stars. Lux had a deep and enduring relationship with every female star. The recent Deepika commercial was pretty much made with the classical values that Lux has always been known for.

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3cZ-Rc5-p8

     

    One of the tricks of handling the star portfolio for Lux was to catch them young. The moment an upcoming star made her appearance in Bollywood the Lux team was there to make friends with her and promote her image in the local film magazines of the day.

     

    Lux was glamour personified. Lux was about the private moments of the star. The ‘star on a pedestal’ image.  Distant but alluring. Not the film star putting her head out of a car to scream at someone littering the road. That was never Lux. The Lux soap advertisement  showcased the glamour of the female star in Indian cinema.  And gave the consumer a peek into her life.

     

    Lux was about the glamourous world of the star and her inner sanctum sanctorum with Lux where she spoilt herself with a luxury bath with Lux. That is what made it the soap of the stars.

     

    But whose soap is it now?

     

    Prabhakar Mundkur is a veteran advertising agency captain who is now a strategy consultant, educator and a prolific writer. The views here are personal

     

  • When a star endorses a device but the tweet gets sent with another device, consumers know that celebrities are bluffing, writes Prabhakar Mundkur

    Prabhakar Mundkur: Not moving people but moving forward with Uber

    By Prabhakar Mundkur

     

    The most noticeable campaign this week was Uber.  When two full-page ads appear on the cover of the Times of India, you can anticipate a major splash.  Arguments raged on LinkedIn earlier this week whether Virat actually uses Uber. In a more innocent world a few decades ago, we believed that stars actually used the brand they endorsed.  Marketers when questioned gave some hair-brained logic that pretended to be well-researched. They said that there is a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ amongst consumers.  But social media has changed that.  When a star endorses adevice but the tweet gets sent with another device, consumers know that celebrities are bluffing.

     

     

    Karthik S gives two potent examples of how celebrities are cheating on their endorsements in his blog Celebrity Brand Ambassadors and Brand Fidelity.

     

    The first is of Sania Mirza endorsing One Plus 3T but when you look at her tweet you know it has come from aniphone which is no doubt her device of choice.

     

     

    The second example he gives is of Oprah Winfrey endorsing the Surface, but unfortunately you know she is an Apple fan because the tweet was sent out of an Ipad.

     

     

    The modern world doesn’t want to believe that celebrities are using the products they endorse.  So, the natural question is why Virat wouldneed to use an Uber, when he would have a fleet of cars and chauffeurs.  And this was the discussion on Linkedin earlier this week.

     

    So when Sanjay Gupta of Uber announced that Virat uses Uber when he is overseas, it was some consolation that he does use Uber sometimes.  Although what relevance using Uber overseas is to endorsing the brand in India, is quite another debate.

     

     

    I quite liked the campaign after watching it a few times, although the poetry that Virat espoused about Uber in the TV commercial neither sounded like him, nor did it sound very sincere.  But the average consumer mightmay well buy it.  When I went to Twitter I found that the hashtag #MovingForward was not very unique, andI found various other non-Uber tweets using it.  It looked like Virat was a spokesperson for the Uber brand wisdom rather than selling the brand.  Although Uber was once upon a time a brand that wasn’t built on advertising, some of its other advertising overseas has been created to elicit a direct action from consumers like signing up for the app. But at least #MovingForward stays close to the global knitting of the brand which is Moving People.

     

    However, what looked quite sincere was a video I found on YouTube where Virat announces his association with Uber and sounds like Virat and not like someone else.

     

    Here he sounds honest and sincere, unlike the TV commercial where he has to recite some difficult lines written by a clever copywriter.  The honesty and sincerity with which celebrities endorse brands is an important factor in celebrity-led advertising.

     

    How much is your award really worth?

     

    Sometimes giving away an award must go beyond it being a recognition.  There must be a reward.  The Oscar which is plated in 24 carat gold is known to cost $400.  Most other awards are just a giveaway, a notional token to say you won something.  So while you may display them proudly in your office or your home you know they are a worthless piece of metal.

     

    But the Star TV network seems to have kept this in mind when they designed the Re-imagine Awards that were given away to Swiggy and Fevicol earlier this week.  Also, they seem to have a star-studded jury that included Sir John Hegarty and Piyush Pandey.

     

    But the most interesting part was how the award was made.  Designed by Peter Layton of London Glass Blowing in Burmendsey, the award itself is a piece of art. Layton uses glass as medium to express art and is putting glass on the world art map.

     

     

    In addition there was an all-expenses-paid trip to a major sporting event for  24 members of the top two winning teams. Now that would make the winners really feel they won something of value.

     

    Maybe a learning for other awards.  Give fewer awards of value rather than hundreds of awards that are worthless metal! 

     

    Adidas Odds

     

    It seems like Adidas Odds has been on a winning streak for creative awards around the world for the last two years and its latest recognition came from none other than WARC, when it was shortlisted for the Effective Innovation category.

     

     

    Odds was a special edition pair of shoes created by Adidas as a tribute to para-athletes.  It is a pair of shoes with either two lefts or two rights and was first released during the Rio De Janeiro Paralympics in 2016.  It is an outstanding piece of creative developed by Dentsu Taproot that one can watch again and again without getting tired.  That is the true test of great advertising!

     

     

  • Every marketer is trying to attract the so-called ‘millennial’ even for products that earlier might not have been marketed to millennials, writes Prabhakar Mundkur

    Prabhakar Mundkur: Millennial Mania

    By Prabhakar Mundkur

     

    Most Indian marketers seem to have been suddenly overcome by millennial mania.  Maybe it is the sheer amount of American marketing literature pervading our ranks that tries to find commonalities in a large and diverse group of people.  Our first chant for India and its young population somehow excluded the word millennial and settled at the ‘youngest population in the world.’ But that has now finally got converted to millennial mania.  Especially since current statistics show that there might be 400 million of this demographic group in our country.  That by any stretch of imagination is not a segment, it is an entire universe.  And close to a third of our overall population.  Never before in our marketing history have we looked at a third of our population as sharing such a huge number of key characteristics.  After all, it would be a miracle to generalize the attitudes of 400 million people with different incomes, locations, education, living standards, attitudes and behavior.

     

    This has resulted in every marketer trying to attract the so-called ‘millennial’ even for products that earlier might not have been marketed to millennials.  The latest brand to attract my attention was the Maruti Ertiga which I found on twitter.

     

     

    By using words like ‘chilling’ no doubt the ad hopes to attract the youth if I may use a less fashionable term.

     

     

    And what do millennials do if one were to retrofit the strategy from the creative execution. They chill. They go to the gym.  They go to the office and work sometimes. They have laptops. They go shopping. They get in and out of fashionable clothes all the time. They even go fishing! (I am sure you will agree that’s a rare one for millennials!) They eat together.  They jump together. Hope that sounds like an insightful enough common factor that binds together 400 million millennials in the country.

     

    Millennials wear denim to work 

    That’s what the new Shopper’s Stop Campaign seems to say.  Maybe we have just hit upon one more deep insight that unifies India’s 400 million millennial population. No wonder I was noticing that all the young BMC workers are wearing denim whilethey repair Mumbai’s roads. Hey, but didn’t this trend start a long time ago?  With non-millennials like Steve Jobs for instance?  But anyway, the trend has just been adopted by Indian millennials who naturally are a little behind the rest of the world, which is understandable.  I believe denims are the uniform of the rebellious. Wait a minute!  Didn’t that American textbook on millennials say that it is the baby boomers who were rebellious?  Millennials are expected to be pro-establishment.  But obviously I am getting confused now.

     

     

    I got a few more things about millennials from this commercial. Millennials like to break the glass ceiling and push boundaries.  Wouldn’t you say that is quite a useful insight? Except that I thought everyone likes to break the glass ceiling.

     

    Hopefully, the viewers of the commercial don’t decide to go and buy Levis or Wrangler or other brands of denim after seeing the commercial.  I am sure there is another hidden quality about the millennials that keeps them glued and loyal to Shopper’s Stop.

     

    Millennials spray deodorants on their shirts

     

    If you thought that deodorants were meant to be sprayed on your underarms or on your skin, you are wrong. Not in India.  At first, I thought that Indian men and women were spraying deodorants on their clothes, because they were afraid that deodorants would play tricks with their sweat glands.  But not so. It is a practice encouraged by Indian marketers.  Take this Fogg commercial.

     

     

    Certainly, it seems like Fogg has to be sprayed on the shirt rather than on the skin.  Also, it is the shirt that smells nice to the lady in the commercial.  But the ad says nothing about how the man may actually smell were he to take off his shirt.

     

    That certainly begs two different questions:

    Is it safe to use Indian deodorants/perfumes on the skin or are they meant to be sprayed on your clothes? They say they are body sprays. But perhaps they should say they are shirt sprays.

     

    Do they work as deodorants or do they work as a perfume?

     

    Perfumes mask body odour.  Deodorants prevent it.

     

    Most importantly when you spray your entire shirt with a perfume or deodorant spray, does it stain your clothes?

     

    And of course, the last question. Are these products only for Indian men?  What are Indian women supposed to do?After all, they are half the millennial population.

     

     

  • I found myself humming the song soon after which is quite an achievement considering most songs and jingles today are like wallpaper…  you hardly notice them, writes Prabhakar Mundkur

    Prabhakar Mundkur: The song “Rishta Wahi. Baat Nayi” from Star Plus has an Earworm

    By Prabhakar Mundkur

     

    Source : youtube.com

     

    When I first walked into an advertising agency as a student and long before I actually joined advertising I still remember seeing a placard on a copywriter’s desk which read “Is there a new way of saying ‘new improved’ ?”   I was reminded of that when Star Plus unveiled their new logo which certainly looked like a new improved version of their earlier logo.  And I would say the same thing about the line “Rishta Wahi. Baat Nayi” which said it was ‘new improved’ but being careful not to stray away too far from its current positioning as a channel. That’s how I would describe it in plain English.   If you went to a flighty innovation consultant however, he might describe it as ‘incremental innovation’. As opposed to ‘evolutionary’ or ‘revolutionary’.

     

    Design agencies have a unique language that only they can use.  It is always flowery, poetic and metaphorical.  One press release I read gave the rationale for the new logo as “the trademark red crystal star with the swoosh, now in gold dust signifying positivity, freshness and celebration of relationships.”

     

    A star cast created the song itself – composed by Ram Sampath and starring Sunidhi Chauhan and Chaandni RMW.  The promo video featured Alia Bhat.

     

     

    The song definitely had an ‘earworm’.  An earworm is defined as a catchy piece of music that continually repeats through a person’s mind after it is no longer playing. So I found myself humming the song soon after.  That’s quite an achievement considering most songs and jingles today are like wallpaper.  You hardly notice them.  Or otherwise they are easily forgettable.

     

    Vistara: 3 agencies in 3 years

    Source: YouTube

     

    Yes, admittedly relationships are getting shorter.  Both personal and ad agency relationships. But when Vistara announced their third agency partner in three years as FCB Ulka, it came as a bit of a surprise.  For a brand which launched just 3 years ago they seemed to have not done travelled a lot of air miles, they have also done a fair amount of agency miles.  The brand launched with Ogilvy as its partner, then moved to Lowe in August 2016 and now FCB Ulka.

     

    Its last commercial ‘Fly the new Feeling’ with Deepika Padukone focused on the inflight experience. After all airline marketers will tell you that ‘inflight’ accounts for more than 80% of your overall experience of an airlines.  There was nothing special about the commercial itself barring the fact that Deepika fans could admire her for a whole minute.

     

    Somehow the Tatas are not known to change agencies every year.  Which is why it is surprising that Vistara is going through a different agency almost every year of its existence.

     

    Hopefully it is not an indication of the average time clients spend with their ad agencies and just a small aberration.

     

    Dhara Oil #ZaraSaBadlav

     

    Take a guess. Is India made up of more joint families or more nuclear families?  The debate was settled a long time ago with the 2011 Census which recorded over half of India’s households recorded as nuclear. Unfortunately for marketer’s joint families make up just 16% of all households.  And strangely joint families are thriving in urban areas rather than in rural areas. Because migration to urban areas are creating economic pressures that necessitate living in a joint family.

     

    But marketers and creative advertising people can’t resist the idea of making another traditional commercial featuring a joint family, trying out the hackneyed theme of mothers and mothers-in-law living with their children.  The other marketers and advertisers who read too many American marketing theories are chasing millennials which by one estimate has 400 million people. And 400 million people is a universe not a segment.  So, it is a challenge to find so many commonalities in such a large universe as easily as the American marketers are doing it.

     

    But Dhara has decided to go traditional by showing that it is perfectly alright for the girl’s parents to live with her and her in-laws. Wow! That is a huge joint family. Nice message. But only if there were more joint families in the India of today or if joint families were an aspirational view of the future to younger targets.

     

     

    I am not quite sure that today’s youngsters are imagining the perfect future together as living with their parents.

     

     

  • So we can expect a smaller WPP minus traditional advertising, writes Prabhakar Mundkur on the ad czar’s new venture

    Return of The Sorrell

     

    By Prabhakar Mundkur

     If you thought that Martin Sorrell’s exit from the WPP group was the end of a great career you were wrong. Sorrell now 73, who stepped down from WPP a few months ago, is making a comeback with a new advertising (and marketing services) venture.

     

    With his experience of taking over an unknown firm called WPP which was largely a shell company 33 years ago, it was natural for him to try his hand again at a similar experiment.

     

    Sorrell now is taking charge of another shell company – Derriston Capital – which he intends to turn into an advertising venture. Confirmation of the Derriston deal was confirmed first by Sky News.  Derriston as a company has been on the New York Stock Exchange since 2016.

     

    In this first interview with Anant Rangaswami on CNBC last night at Zee Melt, Sir Martin spoke on a number of issues with his usual eloquence. For those branding experts who are wondering about the significance of S4, it stands for four generations of Sorrells in the UK. (His grandparents came to the UK from Eastern Europe in 1899.) He quoted Brian Whipple the CEO  of Accenture Interactive while speaking about how competition from consulting might affect the advertising agency business.  Quoting  an interview that Whipple gave he said: “the consulting companies don’t compete with the agencies head-on.  They go above the agencies to the CEOs and CFOs, the CMOs and the CIOs and CTOs. And they say to them you are going through significant change, they might describe it as a digital disruption. You are spending a lot of money. Let’s look at it as one and let’s see how we can improve your productivity, improve your technological response, digitise your company, transform your company and at the same time spend less money. And by the way pay us on the basis of what we save. Which is a very alluring concept”.

     

    Whipple has led Accenture Interactive’s disruption of the traditional agency landscape by creating a new service model.  Whipple is known to have said “[Holding companies] are changing, but the pace of change is woefully slow. And it’s not because of the intent. It’s because of the structure and the culture.”  One couldn’t help feeling that Sir Martin is welcoming the fact that by starting on a clean slate he might be able to do things differently with S4 than what he could do with WPP.

     

    As a new way of doing business Sorrell said in the interview that S4 would not only like to sharpen its tactical response but also develop its strategic response at the higher levels of the company.  He reiterated the need to be ready for change, whether cyclical or strategic.

     

    But what shape might Sorrells new venture take?  Given his penchant as a ‘math man’ and his various criticisms of the ‘mad man’ era of advertising he is likely to be more interested in the world of data and digital.  It is quite likely that Sorrell’s new venture might be devoid of the traditional advertising agency.  In any case revenues of all his advertising agencies put together in WPP were much smaller than the media company or the research company.  Which goes to show that he perhaps thought that advertising was really an old-world phenomenon.  Sorrell is putting in his own personal investment of £40 million into the new venture.  Institutional investors include Lombard Odier, Miton, RIT Capital Partners, Schroders and Toscafund would add a further £11 million.

     

    That of course does not mean that the new venture will be devoid of creativity in other forms.  Sorrell always believed in creativity and the power of ideas although he is often accused of marginalising creativity.  Sorrell always said that the definition of creativity needs to change because he said “we are not in the advertising business anymore”.  Sorrell in the past has also said “75 per cent of what we [WPP] do now, Don Draper and maybe even Sir John Hegarty wouldn’t recognise.”

     

    So what might we expect from Sorrell’s new venture is perhaps a smaller WPP minus traditional advertising and the traditional way of doing business by holding companies.  But like WPP it would grow through acquisition.

     

    To go back to Whipple he is known to have said that for agencies to survive they must leave the founder’s culture behind.  In the case of Sorrel it might well the opposite.  A case of the founder leaving his agency’s culture behind.

     

    Prabhakar Mundkur, better known as Prabsy, is a veteran advertising agency professional, having led agencies in India and globally. And if he’s not thinking brands and strategies, he’s into music, cycling and writing. A prolific writer, he was LinkedIn’s most influential voice in 2016. He also writes ‘Ad Buzz’, a weekly column on MxMIndia.

     

  • The biscuit major relies on Nostalgia Marketing for its new campaign, writes Prabhakar Mundkur

    Does Nostalgia work for Parle-G?

     

    By Prabhakar Mundkur

     

    ‘Brands are like people,’ proclaimed Stephen King the father of account planning.  And like people, brands unfortunately grow old too!  Brands periodically try to stave off the effects of aging through marketing and advertising. But old archetypal brands have something magical about them. They appeal to the masses because they are the lowest common denominator and can talk to anyone in any social or income class, irrespective of class, creed or sex. They are the social glue that brings and keeps people together. They are brands that satisfy, typify and unite all the individuals of one large social tribe. A tribe which is united by common interests, beliefs, habits, languages, culture and customs.

     

    But when brands get old, marketers worry. Their first instinct is to figure out how to make the brand younger.  If a brand has become so mass that they are now failing to appeal to a higher income demographic they would like to get them back.  The ‘formula’ solution from ad agencies is to show younger, better-to-do people in the commercial.  And then hope that the brand acts like a mirror where these new targets can see themselves in the brand. Parle-G is one such archetypal brand.  It instantly brings back childhood memories of dunking Parle-G biscuits in chai.  Mind you, chai in a ‘cutting’ glass perhaps, rather than chai in a tea cup tea that comes out of a teapot. With the background at best of a Lucknow skyline rather than a Manhattan skyline.

     

    It is not difficult to see what the client’s brief on the new‘You are my Parle-G’ campaign might have been. After all every brand in the country is chasing millennials – it is the new buzzword in marketing. Of course, India is supposed to have over 400 million millennials. That by any stretch of the imagination is not a segment, it is an entire universe!   And god help all those who are trying to typify such an incredibly large audience.  Because a school teacher’s twenty-two-year-old son in Jhumri Telaiya might hold very different attitudes to life from a IIM professor’s twenty-two-year-old son living in Ahmedabad!

     

    The new campaign has launched with a string of  very nicely made commercials with people reminiscing about their moments with Parle-G in the past.  One couldn’t help feeling that the people portrayed in the commercials somehow seemed more privileged than earlier Parle-G commercials – in fact in one commercial the protagonist was even working overseas. Probably signalling another possible worry about the brand: that as we move up the income chain, usage of Parle-G is likely to drop.  And of course the last worry being that children were glad to have a Parle-G but maybe not the man in his twenties (how I hate to say millennial!).

     

     

     

     

    Nostalgia Marketing

    Of course, if reminiscing about your past experience of a brand does anything to prompt its present or even future usage is still a question.  Quite often the problem with old brands is that nostalgia cantend to remain as nostalgia. One piece of American marketing theory says that the millennial generation, in particular, is longing for the familiar. Largely because the defining cultural motif of our times is to counter the exhaustive pace that technology is forcing on our lives. Millennials, this theory says, are looking for brands that remind them of growing up and that elicit feelings of safety, comfort, and happiness. And that there is a yearning to bring back the “good old days” as they remember them. This kind of marketing logic rests on the fact that people (millennials) are literally buying into the past.  The thesis is that if you can show that a brand has been a part of a culture in the past, it shows how relevant it is to the present.

     

    But if a brand is rooted in nostalgia, the question that needs to be asked is how is the brand positioned to evolve?For me the most potent shortcoming of a nostalgia campaign in general is that it makes people remember why they fell in love with the brand, but doesn’t tell us how that love has evolved to the present day.  And that perhaps is the biggest risk of nostalgia marketing.Another problem for aging brands is trying to hit the sweet spot between the mass market and the demographic that the brand is currently missing out on and this is often an elusive task.

     

    So, is nostalgia marketing common for other brands we know?  Almost every brand has had a brush with nostalgia marketing. Coke, Pepsi, Microsoft and many others. Two years ago, Coke even actually remastered its 1971 classic coke commercial created by McCann Erikson for 4k television.  At the 2018 Super Bowl a number of brands retreated into the past while playing the nostalgia theme. Here for example is the Pepsi commercial that aired on the Super Bowl which even brought Cindy Crawford back.

     


    Unless it was just a reaction to the backlash they faced with the Kendal Jenner spot they had to ultimately withdraw.

     

    Facebook is really good with nostalgia marketing. It keeps reminding you of pictures that you put on Facebook ten years ago.  The term ‘a blast from the past’, is a meme, that uses a new colloquialism that is actually related to nostalgia.

     

    In closing, when you talk about an 80-year-old brand like Parle-G, one is bound to have one’s favourite campaigns for the brand. For me, my personal favourite is a string of commercials created about fifteen years ago.  I think these commercials hit the sweet spot for both what Parle-G as a brand stands for.  And without quite saying it explicitly in so many words it implied that Parle-G is Bharat ka Apna biscuit without the elaborate antics of anyone painting their faces with the national flag.

     

     

     

     

    These old commercials reflect in many ways the real India and the real Parle-G in its most genuine context.  And while it shows young children in the commercial, we always knew that adults loved Parle-G equally!

     

    But “the times they are a changin’ ” as Bob Dylan once said.  And the new campaign is well-made and perhaps reflects the new reality for this lovable old Indian brand.

     

     

  • Public sector companies in Indiahave treated their ad agency pitches like a circus, rues Prabhakar Mundkur

    The Pitch Bazaar with 22 ad agencies

     

    By Prabhakar Mundkur

     

    When Rediffusion won the State Bank of India mandate, the more staggering news was that Redifffusion had bagged the account of the largest public sector bank in the countryin a pitch with 22 agencies. After all, nowhere in the world would a client ask 22 agencies to pitch for their business.  Nor would any company ask 22 vendors for an RFP.  Calling 22 agencies means that either the client has done no homework, whatsoever in creating a short list through some preliminary desk research. Or it means that there is pressure that percolates from the top to call so many agencies, which might be typical of public sector accounts. After all every senior person in a public sector has a favourite that needs to be included.And this system has dogged the ad agencies for many years. It defeats all the sensibilities of vendor management. Good management practice would dictate not to ask more than five or at the most six vendors to participate. After all, if you called such a large number to participate, common management sense would dictate that the best would stay away.  But not in India and not for a public sector brand perhaps. The tradition has been that everybody throws their hat in hoping that they will hit a lottery.  But for some strange reason, public sector companies seem to follow the ‘more the merrier’ approach when it comes to appointing vendors.

     

    But this then has been the history of the public sector in India. They have treated their ad agency pitches like a circus.  I have been in public sector pitches where their time management is so atrocious that you are sitting with another three-four agencies, in a common waiting room because as usual either someone has taken more time than what was allowed and not been disqualified or because the entire process started late.  Public sector brands are known not to follow common courtesies and niceties like in the private sector.

     

    Also, public sector pitches are highly political.  The moment a winner is announced, there is a chorus from the losers that the match has been fixed almost like boxing matches of yore when a winner was announced.The losers are typically smaller agencies which supposedly have a reputation for financial advertising or have public sector experience, whatever that means. Which might have prompted Dinesh Menon, Chief Marketing Officer of SBI to tell the press a few days ago that “There is no such rule that a PSU bank has to work with several agencies.”Of course, there is isn’t.  And no doubt his detractors might be quoting history.  A 2009 press announcementfrom SBI proudly announced 10 agencies would share the then Rs 200 crore advertising account.  And if we found ourselves overawed by the sheer number of 22 agencies participating in a pitch, then 10 agencies sharing an advertising account, takes us from the ridiculous to the sublime. Even the world’s largest advertisers like P & G don’t have 10 ad agencies on their roster.  So, well done SBI for having the guts to challenge the age-old public-sector practice which has been the woe of several ad agencies for the last many decades.  Please now break the next rule and call only 5 agencies for your next pitch whenever it is, in the future. And then do us one last favour. Tell the other public sector companies to follow your good example.

     

    Are Indian ad men bad losers?

     

    I was surprised to see an interview with Pratap Bose in afaqs.com this week.  It seemed like he has been required to justify the stellar performance of his agency The Social Street at the recently concluded Abbys. After all the Abbys are supposed to be awards ‘of the people, by the people and for the people.” I was surprised by the tone of the very first question posed to him:

    “Let’s talk about the issues around your Goafest performance. You have been accused of doing pro bono work to win awards. Comment.”Such an accusation from whoever it is, seems to be in very bad taste.  After all, if pro bono creative seems to win awards at the Abbys, that could be a flaw with the award show and not a flaw with the winner. No other agency was prevented from entering pro bono work I am sure.

    You can only come to one conclusion. That in addition to everything else that plagues the ad industry, they seem to be very bad losers as well.

     

    Is TV finally dying?

     

    It certainly isn’t in India where everyone’s eyes are glued to the IPL frenzy.  But we have heard for sometime now that digital slowly seems to be taking over consumer’s preferences.  Hard to believe, but true.  And with the recent accusations against digital media of a lack of transparency from the chief slayer of the current ad agency model, Marc Prichard of P&G, one would have thought that the fascination for digital might have waned.  But maybe not so.

     

    Adidas chief executive Kasper Rorsted told the press that they have turned their back on TV advertising.Rorsted is known to have said: “It’s clear that the younger consumer engages with us predominantly over the mobile device. Digital engagement is key for us – you don’t see any TV advertising anymore.”

     

    MrRorsted seems to have bitten the bullet instead of just paying lip service by praising the effects of digital like some other global advertisers.  In fact, one particular global FMCG company hasn’t even updated its brand’s Facebook pages of some its brands for months now. And yet they keep evangelising on the power of digital.

     

     

  • Is relegating creative people for just ‘jury duty’ paying lip service to the creative community, asks Prabhakar ‘Prabsy’ Mundkur

    Prabhakar Mundkur: Shouldn’t Creative Directors Run Award Shows?

    By Prabhakar Mundkur

     

    When I read about Sonal Dabral’s appointment on the board of the One Club of Creativity, I couldn’t help going to their website to see who the other board members were.  It was no surprise that all the members were creative heads of agencies.  Then I decided to visit the D&AD website. Again, no surprise. All the board members were creative directors.

     

    Which raises an important question.  Should award shows be run by a bunch of suits?  Who have never written an ad in their entire life?  After all, award shows celebrate creativity so it is natural that the people who run an award show must be creative.So, is relegating creative people for just ‘jury duty’ paying lip service to the creative community?

     

    I asked one industry friend why suits might be running some award shows.  He said that advertising clubs were a business, and they needed to be run by managers, not creative people.  Now that doesn’t make any sense at all. Considering that most agencies in the country or the significant ones are being run by creative people rather than suits. But there could be another reason why creative people are not as prominent as they should be at local award shows.  That they are not interested in doing anything beyond jury duty and would rather leave all rest of the dirty work for the suits to take care of.  This however begs the question why they are willing to accept prominent positions on the boards of international awards, but not local awards.  Are the local awards too infra dig? Or is there some other problem?

     

    There could be a third reason why creative people are not given much prominence beyond jury duty in an award show.  This is an old argument where suits and CMOs feel that they contribute equally to the creative process, so it is not out of place for them to be in charge of the awards. This argument is a bit contentious.  CMOs should be heading the marketing award shows or at the most the Effies if they want to be still involved so deeply in advertising industry bodies, and suits should be heading the industry associations which are involved in the business of advertising.  Why are they in prominent positions in the creative award shows?  No clear and convincing answer emerges after examining all the alternative arguments.

     

    At the end of the day, most award shows need event management skills more than anything else.  No surprise then that the Cannes Lions is run by Ascential Events.  Cannes is a unique business model where 42% of the revenue comes from delegate passes, 41% from award entries, 15% from partnership and digital, and 2% from hotel room booking commissions.A model worth emulating for any award show – where the revenues from award entries and delegate passes is almost equal.

     

    Commonsense says that in the long term no award show can be really successful without roping in creative people as front runners of an award show.

     

    What? Yet another self-appointed Industry Body?

     

     

    If you can’t beat them, join them.If we didn’t have enough self-appointed industry bodies, whose members largely get self-elected year after year to their positions, we now have one more industry body called FEUD. (Forum for Ethical Use of Data). Formed by media professionals, one is not sure how they would detect the ethical or unethical use of data.  After all, the most qualified technology professionals and data experts were not able to bring to our notice how FB and Cambridge Analytica were exploiting personal data.  The use of data is a complex technological web that takes shrewd tech minds to figure out how data is being misused.  If the Congressional hearings of Mark Zuckerberg are anything to go by, even he didn’t have answers to all the questions posed by the Congressional Committee.

     

    Also, for an industry body to have teeth, it needs some recognition from the users and collectors of data, and some nod from a government body.  Take the reported misuse of Aadhar data. It is a few sting operations from brave journalists and experts like Ed Snowden who brought to our notice how that data base is potentially being mis-used. Snowden has the unique distinction of both being a computer professional and an ex-CIA employee.

     

    One would have rather seen a government body say headed by a person of Nandan Nilekani’s stature who understands the business of technology and data, or an industry group like NASSCOM to initiate a body for the ethical use of data. The other option could have been a self-regulatory body formed by companies who are sitting on tons of data, i.e. banks, telecom companies, Facebook and other social media companies and Google which dominates the Indian internet ecosystem. One can’t help wishing that a body like this could have been formed by more solid, powerful and competent authorities on the subject of data.

     

    Lastly, to enforce ethical use of data, legislation is imperative.  Currently India does not have any express legislation governing data protection or privacy.  The European Union’s GDPR ( General Data Protection Regulation ) which will become effective on May 25 will be one of the most wide-ranging and comprehensive pieces of legislation enacted to protect consumer data.Under GDPR, information such as customer IP addresses and even web cookies will be subject to the same strict security standards as physical addresses and social security numbers.

     

    Unfortunately, in India the relevant laws on data protection are currently bundled under the Information Technology Act 2000.   There is no doubt the objective of FEUD is honorable, so this space is worth watching with interest.

  • The acquisition seems like a marriage that has been made in heaven, writes Prabhakar Mundkur

    With Flipkart, will Walmart finally compete with Amazon in online space?

     

    By Prabhakar Mundkur

     

    For a long time now, Amazon has been a pain in the side of Walmart. Largely because Walmart has been the traditional brick-and-mortar retailer, who hasn’t yet made the kind of inroads they would have liked to make in the online space. But they have tried hard, even to the extent of letting you place your orders online so that you can just collect your shopping from the nearest Walmart store. In its first fiscal year after the Jet.com acquisition, Walmart online sales grew 44% to hit $ 11.5 billion. However, in the fourth quarter of 2017, it grew just 23% rattling investors and bringing down their stock price by almost 10%.

     

    But is Jet a good fit with Walmart? One is not sure. Jet has higher income consumers who are urban in their profile. In fact, analysts have questions about how Walmart will integrate Bonobos and Modcloth, its other online acquisitions into the main brand Walmart. But the challenge for Walmart remains. How can it play catch-up with the world largest online store in the world which is Amazon? And how can it make a dent in what it has identified as its key growth market i.e. China and India? Compared to its other acquisitions Flipkart seems like a perfect fit. And there will be very few integration problems with the brand Walmart.

     

    The problem is not just the fact that Amazon has a headstart in establishing an online business. There is also the question of the brand Amazon versus the brand Walmart. Younger consumers somehow prefer to shop at Amazon rather than Walmart which has to do with the essential personality of the Amazon brand rather than anything else. Walmart has positioned itself through its tagline ” Save money. Live better”. While this might be true, that is also what Amazon offers without saying it quite so explicitly.

     

    In this context, the acquisition of Flipkart makes great sense. It gives them a foothold in India, one of their priority growth markets. It gives them growth in online sales, something that has eluded them in spite of their other acquisitions in the online space. And lastly, it positions them as a formidable competitor to Amazon in India, something they have not managed in any other country in the world. So, with the acquisition of Flipkart, they lock horns with Amazon for a piece of India’s growing retail sector. The online sector has always been something of a challenge for Walmart. Doug Chief Executive of Walmart is known to have said ” “We’re learning something new . . . has not been our historic competency.”

     

    Why Flipkart?

     

    Source: Walmart

    First of all, India is a growing market with GDP growth rates which are amongst the best in the world. Secondly, India is a young market and has the largest number of millennials and Gen Z accounting for almost 66% of the population. This gives Walmart access to a young market which has hitherto eluded them in the core North American markets of Mexico, Canada, and Central America. India is the second largest internet market in the world and still growing furiously. And lastly, India will have almost 58% smartphone penetration by 2020 easing the way for online sales. And lastly in the future offline retail is likely to show good growth and online retail will be a multiple of offline retail growth. All this makes Flipkart a very attractive proposition.

     

    Source: Walmart

     

    Besides being an attractive market the acquisition of Flipkart gives Walmart access to Myntra and Jabong which is India’s leading fashion online destination.

     

    In many ways, therefore, this seems like a marriage that has been made in heaven.

     

     

  • The non-profit objective of Kyoorius certainly gives it a ‘halo’ over other awards, writes Prabhakar Mundkur

    Prabhakar Mundkur: Will Kyoorius upstage the Abbys as an award show?

    By Prabhakar Mundkur

     

    The Kyoorius Awards have been steadily gaining steam over the years.  Abbys on the other hand has been under a cloud the last many years for plagiarism, scam ads created only for the awards, and a boycott from several agencies that seem to grow year after year.

     

    Most award shows these days position themselves both as a learning/knowledge forum and an awards night to celebrate the and acknowledge the winners.  Zee Melt, the two-dayprogramme on May 30-31 that precedes the KyooriusAwards night on June 1, promises some of the world’s best speakers from Fernando Machado, Head of Brand Marketing, Burger King to Chuck Porter, Chairman CP+B demonstrating that there will be a lot of knowledge sharing at the event.   But there has been an indifferent demand for these knowledge sessions thus far. Is it our new-found and emergingnationalism that makes us feel superior to everybody else in the world, and our attitude of ‘what do we have to learn from them’? Followed by the oft repeated chorus ‘India is different’.  Or are people just tired of listening to experts on advertising and marketing because there are too many of them, one is not sure.

     

    The jury is selected together with the One Club for Creativity and has the top creatives from across the world.The Kyoorius awards differ from the Abbys in that instead of awarding gold, silver and bronze all winners get a Blue Elephant.

     

    They jury base their decisions on three criteria:

    – An original and inspiring idea

    – Well executed

    – Relevant to its extent

     

    The non-profit objective of Kyoorius certainly gives it a ‘halo’ over other awards.  It does seem like they are doing something right.

     

    RoohAfza goes Retro

     

    RoohAfza was launched in 1906, by Hakkem Hafiz Abdul Majeed in Ghaziabad. But if you think this is a really old summer drink have a second guess.  Pepsi was launched at least 8 years before RoohAfza in 1898.  And while Pepsi has kept up the challenge of staying contemporary forover a 100 years, Roof Afza seems quite content on revealing its age.  A few years ago, the brand tried to modernize and stay relevant but their latest commercial clearly takes them back into their own past.

     

     

    And if the imagery is old fashioned it is supported by the jingle which has lyrics set to the tune of the 1956 classic YehDil Hai Mushkil clearly taking Roof Afzafirmly into the past.

     

    If their source of business is carbonated drinks the brand has a challenge to appeal to the youth of this country with its old-fashioned imagery.

     

    Nirma – Still the challenger brand but in a new category

    The debate on brand extensions and whether it will be a failure or success has engaged marketers and academics alike for the last many decades.  The traditional Western model of brand extension theory we all know does not hold. After all which theorist would have said that a shipbuilding brand would produce the one of  world’s most popular car brands in Hyundai.  Or that a well-known consumer durables like LG could also produce a shampoo successfully?

    When Harley Davidson launched apparel and ornaments  the company may have lost focus. In the 1990s, it extended the brand too far. It introduced products like wine coolers, aftershave and perfumes. I guess it’s important to understand that every brand has its stretch limit, even a great cult brand like Harley. For example Harley Davidson found its stretch limit when it introduced a perfume.  For most people the only smells associated with the  Harley brand were sweat and petrol, so I am not surprised the Harley perfume failed.

    Nirma on the other hand, did the wise thing when they entered the cement category.  They knew they could not stretch the Nirma brand indefinitely to cement, which is why they wisely entered with a new company brand  called Nuvocon. In 2016, the Nirma Group acquired the assets of Lafarge, giving them access to the use of their two brand names Duraguard and Concreto.  This year Nuvoco has got ambitious by sponsoring the Royal Challengers Bangalore team for the current IPL.

    Will Nuvoco be able to dislodge the top brands in the cement category like ACC, Ambuja, Binani, Birla and Ultra Tech?  Well, the Nirma group is used to proving themselves as a challenger brand so they might well repeat their earlier success now in the cement category.

     

     

  • Fordgoes on a 'diet', surrogate ads, the Abby Awards and more… in Prabhakar Mundkur's weekly column

    How nervous CMOs nail ad agencies to save their skin

     

    By Prabhakar Mundkur

     

    The General Motors diet became famous some years ago as an effective means of slimming down and losing weight, although why it was attributed to a car maker completely alluded me. I later discovered it was an eating plan indeed developed by the car company. In January 2018, Ford Motors announced it would go on a ‘fitness’ initiative that would include slashing spending of up to $14 billion in the next 5 years. Marketing they said would naturally come under the lens along with the current WPP relationship although nothing was confirmed.   Now comes the Ford Motors announcement of a call for an advertising review of a part of their business.  WPP has been a near lifelong partner for Ford Motors first with JWT, and later with GTB a dedicated unit for Ford which was set up to pledge loyalty and allegiance for the account.

     

    Unfortunately, putting the Ford account under review on the heels of the resignation of Sir Martin Sorrell could not have been more mistimed from WPP’s point of view.   But one wonders if this is a typical kneejerk reaction to the rising pressure on profitability at Ford.  Ford has been reporting underwhelming profits in the last year and the outlook for 2018 looks no better.

     

    The history of advertising is strewn with examples of clients putting the agency under review whenever there is a sneeze on the business front.  Although the problem might have nothing to do with communication, agencies have been the first to be hit, often unfairly by nervous CMOs trying to save their own skin.

     

    Ford is the third largest car maker in the world with a global market share of 6.5% after Toyota which is at No 1 with a 9.2% market share and Volkswagen at No 2 with a 7.2 % market share.  But except their Top 5 markets, which includes US, China, UK, Canada and Germany the brand might be under pressure more because of an inappropriate product mix country wise rather than any problem with their communication.

     

     

    Xiaomi, the Price Warrior

    Xiaomi overtaking leader Samsung in the last quarter of 2017 as India’s largest mobile might have taken even Samsung by surprise.  The brand now seems to be readying to be a world No 2 globally not a mean feat.

     

    But this begs the eternal question for marketers.  Are price warriors long term players or are they just destined to be the flavor of the year?  While Xiaomi has definitely disrupted the market the key question that comes to mind is whether Xiaomi is an affordable brand or is it a cheap brand?  And does it have anyother endearing quality in its arsenal beyond price.

     

    When one looks at their latest commercial with Katrina Kaif it seems to be a pure execution without a long-term brand building idea.

     

     

     

    We have seen many price warriors fail in the past.  A great example is Videocon which managed double digit leadership market shares in its initial phase, but now is a forgotten brand with a staggering debt.

     

    Unfortunately, after looking at their latest China commercial. I did not find it inspiring either.  So hopefully the brand takes notice that positioning and building brand values is as important as disrupting the market as a price warrior.

     

    IPL is full of Surrogate Advertising 

    One ex-industry professional with a long-term grudge against the advertising industry has pointed out an accusing finger at the industry’s self-regulatory body for the number of surrogate ads during the IPL.

     

    Unfortunately, the ball on this seem to lie squarely with the government.  Advertising for extensions of liquor brands is allowed under the Cable and TV Act 1995, and this comes directly under the jurisdiction of the I & B Ministry and the CBFC.

     

    Any way the accusations of the person in question may have been misplaced. Obviously, he has not done his homework before setting his pen to paper.

     

    Whither Abbys?

    Now that the Abby fever is over, it does seem that participation at the Abby’s declined severely this year.  Also,there were the usual complaints of not being able to get a drink or dinner without standing in a long queue even though the crowds were smaller this year.  One big disappointment seemed to be that the Master Jury members could not get their own agencies to participate. The award’s organisers seem to think that the reason for the lack of participation is the high cost of entry that is dissuading agencies. Some say that the organising members of the Abbys are the same year after year and new members are not welcomed, which may also be a constraint on the award show.  The flipside of this argument is that not many leaders are willing to come forward to offer their services to help the industry bodies.

     

    Bill Gates once said, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Obviously the trick here is to find out why the non-participating agencies are staying away from the Abbys.

     

    Unless of course the real reason is the over-inflated egos of the key industry leaders which might be the root of the problem. And there might be no real solution to that one.

     

  • In this week’s edition of AdBuzz, Prabhakar Mundkur scans some recent ads and writes about the war of the ‘babas’ and more…

    Prabhakar Mundkur: New Durex campaign struggles with contradictions

    By Prabhakar Mundkur

     

    If you have ever felt a dentist’s glove inside your mouth you know what latex tastes like.  So, one does get the rationale for flavoured condoms for improving the quality of oral sex, even if the flavours might seem a little regressive like kala khatta, and meetha pan.

     

    But here is the contradiction. Pankaj Duhan, marketing director, RB Health-South Asia told afaqs.com ‘..95 per cent of Indians do not use condoms and we already have a huge population. This is an alarming situation!”If 95% of Indian’s don’t use condoms what is the point of encouraging them to use flavoured condoms for oral sex?  Because oral sex doesn’t make more babies.

     

    The other contradiction I found is that RB says that it is promoting ‘faithful promiscuity’ and yet they have commercials like this one which actually talks about having sex with a stranger.  I thought that it was not socially responsible advertising to be so blatant about promiscuity. Watch this film which is titled “Encounter with a hot stranger”.

     

     

    The actual flavoured condom ads I thought were not done tastefully.  But of course you the public can be final jury on this one. If you enjoy sexual innuendos like this one, no doubt RB will be eminently successful.

     

     

    You be the judge but I personally found the commercial quite revolting, and I can tell you I am not a prude.

     

    Horlicks: Much ado about nothing

     

    When GSK moved their Horlicks brand after 80 years to FCB Ulka mid 2017, it shook up the industry.   One doesn’t see relationships break after 80 years.  It’s like breaking a marriage after 80 years.  There seems little point in doing so.  JWT in its characteristic, quiet style took the blow with dignity and without too much regret.  And now comes the news that Horlicks might be up for sale to finance the GSK buyout of Novartis Nutrition.

     

    Horlicks has franchise largely in India although it is imported in Australia and New Zealand and is also present in Malaysia and the West Indies.  In the UK, it is a small brand and people drink Horlicks as a night cap.  It is a classic case of an entire category becoming irrelevant, and a lack of category innovation leading to declining sales.  This has affected other food drinks of yesteryears like Complan.

     

     

    Once upon a time when nutrition was a problem and milk was inadequate or of low quality in the country, Horlicks played an important role. Parents are no longer open to adding Horlicks to the milk.  They would rather serve their children cereal or muesli. Or just give them plain milk. And nutrition is not as big a concern as it was a few decades ago.

     

    Suitors to buy the GSK Horlicks brand I believe are many.  The question is what happens to the ad agency FCB Ulka who won this business from JWT with great aplomb last year.  Will the buyer hand over the brand to their trusted agency or carry on with FCB Ulka who has been with Horlicks for just a year now? Alternatively, the buyer could just ask for an agency pitch. Interesting times ahead.

     

    War of the Babas

    The ayurvedic segment might be hotting up with the launch of the Sri Sri Tattva from Sri Sri Ravishankar.  The commercial however was a bit of a letdown with the hackneyed theme of a ‘just married’ scenario where Sri Sri Tattva products are a wedding gift.  But then it is not advertising that is creating this category, it is the product and the ayurvedic positioning.

     

     

    While the expectation was that Sri Sri Tattva might consider premium pricing, the 1 litre desi ghee pack on bigbasket.com showed that Sri Tattva was priced at Rs 530 while Patanjali’s desi ghee was priced at Rs 500.

     

    It would be interesting to see if the babas might just compete with each other or the MNCs.

     

    A good brand can take bad advertising

     

     

    While Jio has to be admired as an innovator who disrupted the mobile telephony category, its advertising seems to challenge every rule in the book.  One is left with fleeing images of people singing and dancing with well-known Bollywood stars and a sprinkling of East European models. The merriment then ends with a pack shot on Jio Digital Life.  If one were to guess the advertising brief backwards, one would say that someone said “let us be remembered as Dhan Dhana Dhan”. The rest might have been put together by a writer and director of dubious distinction.

     

     

    Jio certainly proves one thing. That a good product can survive atrocious advertising.