The Case of the Kumbh or the Mela

Quick, name one place on earth where there is an annual congregation of over 100 million people, both women and me, living in media dark areas, driven by faith and with money in their pocket. No prizes for guessing the Kumbh Mela.

With such a potent combination, no wonder that marketers are attracted to the Kumbh like bees to nectar laden fruit.

Enough has also been written about successful marketing at the Kumbh Mela. The essential formula seems to be for brands to drive a combination of visibility and consumer experience, by thinking big, thinking innovative, thinking local and most importantly, being useful.

So, how is 2016 going to be any different?

The imaginative among us may think of a live feed on Periscope, health bands on Sadhus, an album of emotions on Instagram, and a unique Kumbh emoticon on Facebook.

Even if we believe that things cannot go that far, here are three predictions from the brave forecaster.

Firstly, this Kumbh would be the youngest ever, with more young people under the age of twenty-five thronging the streets after the traditional ‘puja and snaan’.  For the India observer, this demographic is no surprise, but the uptick in their ‘faith tourism’ surely is. Blame it on the zeitgeist of the moment – an increasing ambition, uncertainty in the economy, lack of jobs and the concomitant restlessness - make it certain that the average small town young guy is going to snake his way into the Kumbh this year. Bharat Mata Ki Jai!

Secondly, this Kumbh would be the most data-driven ever. With more smartphones and more apps than ever before, expect technology (not just mobility) to make its presence felt at the Kumbh. As rural and small town consumers get more comfortable dealing with data, this could well be the Kumbh of the gigabyte driven by free Wi-Fi.

Thirdly, expect Patanjali (and other such local challengers!) to get more aggressive, pushing the traditional FMCG and Telcos aside. This also would be no surprise given the faith-based propositions that many regional and local brands seem to be riding on. And when the Baba himself makes a visit to the stall, expect more euphoria and mayhem. Who said that religion and capitalism do not mix?

And then there is the matter of the fourteenth akhada for the transgender, with people already taking sides on the divisive issue.

If the Kumbh is a microcosm of India, what does this tell us about our country?

As they say, for everything in India, the opposite is equally true! Many ethnographers have deduced that change in India is slow, continuous and morphing. Rama Bijapurkar writes that change in India is about ‘transformation from within’. She describes it as signs of a "tight fist loosening", and "critical mass generated by a large body of people changing a little bit". She warns us to look out for creeping trends rather than mega trends.

One such creeping trend is of a more educated, more tech savvy, more ambitious and yet somehow more parochial generation. This is a generation consuming a diet of polarized media, in an insular (social media) bubble of like-minded people, looking for experiences that feed the blinkered worldview.

Given this creeping trend, how will marketers leverage the Kumbh of 2016? Will they just be mere vultures making ‘good business’ intruding themselves in this huge congregation? Or will they try to shape the future, reaching out to people in a meaningful way and making a positive impact to their lives?

Another way to look at the same is to see whether brands will leverage the Kumbh or the Mela?

The Kumbh represents a confluence of cultures, a symbol of spiritual arousal, the confluence of nature and humanity, and a realization of the duality of darkness and light. In other words, Kumbh is the source of awakened energy. Equally, it is also a ‘mela’; an event that is sharply focused on entertainment, essentials, food and exciting novelties, all available at a discount for the experience hungry consumer.  

Early signs from the government and organizing bodies are encouraging. Plastic has been banned in the Mela zone. Biofuel vehicles would be run to check pollution. Organize waste disposal units have been installed. Why, even the vermillion to anoint the various deities is supposedly organic!

If only marketers get inspired by these signals, and decide to do something good for humanity. After all, is that not what the assembly was all about?

This article has been published elsewhere on the Economic Times Brand Equity here and the Marketing Buzzar here.

Photo credits: http://swiatoslaw.photoshelter.com/image/I0000f2dlWNVB0H8

The Case of a Coloured WorldView

‘Whenever you see colour, think of us’, went the erstwhile by-line of a famous paint brand. Allow me to propose a slight, yet significant, philosophical correction to this thought. I would rather that, ‘Whenever you see colour, think of prejudice’.

Boys are blue, girls are pink, virginal is white, festive is marigold, dirty is brown, winners are gold, losers are bronze, lust is red, Hindu is saffron, Muslim is green, sickness is grey, evil is black. Do I need to continue?

And this is why colour is prejudice. Whenever you see colour, see the stereotype and beware. Colour prevents us from seeing possibilities. It constrains us to a false reality. It creates artificial expectations.

When one understands this reality, they realize the many biases that influence their everyday purchase decisions.

When I buy a toy for my nephews, it better not be pink; this when they have never raised any objection to this aforesaid colour. Am I not propagating a myth that over time becomes a false reality?

When my wife asks for a formal fashion suggestion, I suggest a bright shade of marital red. Equally, I frown on the symbolism of any white garment. In the same vein, I would never attend a formal office gathering in anything but the epitome of professionalism, a light blue shirt.

Now, one may argue that these colours encode ages of distilled semiotic wisdom. They convey, in shorthand, the significance of the transaction.

But, now, I worry about whether I am just participating in yet another prejudiced behaviour. Am I colouring the world (pun intended) with my own biases?

Tellingly, the very sight of an object seems to create expectations that mask all our other senses. Imagine a pani poori. And now, imagine it overflowing with rasagolla chashni. Did not see that coming, did you?

I learnt this lesson at a casual visit to the exhibition ‘Dialogues in the Dark’ that masked our sense of sight and took us around six exhibits that we could only ‘see’ with our other four senses. This blindfolded experience was sensationally surreal. But, more importantly, it showed me how much I depend on sight to inform my opinions.

Now, nowhere am I suggesting that we all go blind. But, I do believe that we need to be conscious of the biases created by colour (and, more fundamentally, sight itself!).

Why is all this important to the reader of this site, one may wonder.

Firstly, almost all truth is relative to the biases of the receiver. The more aware we are of these biases, the more we are able to see all sides of the story and make a conscious choice of the ‘truth’ we wish to believe.

Less metaphysically speaking, most current marketing seems to go by like a ship-in-the-dark because it rides on preconceived (and acceptable) notions, rather than creating new (and disruptive) narratives.

I propose that these new narratives and disruption are the very lifeblood of progress. Incremental innovations do mark an improvement, but they do not fire up the consumer’s imagination or push the limits of possibilities.

Then the question becomes, does colour and our created biases around it hinder such disruption?
There are some (few?) examples to the contrary. Somebody did challenge Mr. Ford’s notion of “any colour as long as it is black”. United Colours of Benetton became a multi-billion brand by riding on our insecurities around colour. Of relatively more recent vintage, Allen Solly did challenge conventions with Friday Dressing. Then, just last week, on my Facebook newsfeed, I saw a picture of a pink Rolls Royce Phantom parked outside a posh Hong Kong hotel. There are some brave people out there!

But, for each such example, there are a million examples out there that chose to reinforce trite conventions and choose to follow the trodden path.

If colour and sight are the primary sense with which we engage the world, it only makes sense that they are also the most crucial signifier of disruption and change.

In a line, if you wish to shake up the status quo, start with colour!

Alternatively, in a remix mood;
Roses are not red, violets need not be blue.
Sugar is certainly not sweet (for some), so what colours you?

p.s. Imagine colours carried this article on 2nd of Feb 2016

The Case for Nudging Marketing into the Future

The Short Read –

As marketing heads into an increasingly dystopian reality of all the four P’s being taken over by other functions within the organization, it needs to reinvent itself for the next revolution that focuses on behavioural strategies that actively contribute to the top-line revenue of the organization. Welcome to ‘behavioural marketing’.

The Long Read –

Good Morning. But, some pragmatists among us will ask whether it is truly a good morning for brand marketers?

In an increasingly dystopian (for some) reality, product is being innovated by R&D, pricing is decided by finance, place is negotiated by trade, and promotion is driven by procurement. With all the four P’s of marketing being taken over by other functions within the organization, brand management seems to be increasingly sitting in the back seat.

It is also equally true that, in uncertain market conditions, with organizations and stock markets obsessed about growth, brand management still seems to be in a time warp, worried about how much awareness our communications have achieved, about how consumers perceive our brand, and worse, that soft fuzzy thing called intangible equity.

Now, allow me to make it clear that I am not against these measures, but this article is a wake-up call to acknowledge that most of these are fast growing outside brand management’s sphere of influence.

This may not look like a good morning, but I believe that this new era heralds the third revolution in marketing.

The first of the three revolutions was the _shift, where the marketing center of gravity moved away from local markets to regional and global headquarters, while the sales function also divorced itself, being seen as too important to be left to marketers in a competitive world.

We reluctantly agreed to this change since we could still hop over to the second revolution. We jumped on the digital transformation bandwagon starting from the job of creating a brand ‘website’. However, this too has been quickly taken over by the in-house I.T. department, led by the growing ambitions of the Chief Technology Officer.

And now, we are seeing a third wave where the role of marketing itself is getting redefined. I call this the ‘post-Kotler’ era as almost all levers of conventional marketing are driven elsewhere in the organization.

So, where does that take us? Are we consigned to be extinct like the ‘Personal Digital Assistant’ (remember Palm Pilot)? Or will sheer survival instinct drive us to change the foundations of what we do and language of how we work?

Here is one possible way of to reinvent marketing.

Forget the past, forget the fuzzy, forget managing the intangible. Instead focus on influencing people’s behaviour. Do the nudges that motivate them to behave in a way that favours our organization. More from being a money-sinking, margin-reducing cost center to becoming a revenue-generating friend of the Chief Financial Officer.

I call this thing ‘behavioural marketing’.

Marketing has always struggled between two alternating views. The first being the Homo Economicus, the dominantly economist view of the rational man maximizing his self interest & utility. And the second being the Homo Sociologicus, the opposite view of man as a function of his culture and sociology, not necessarily driven by personal selfish rational improvement alone.

But, now it is time to recognize the Homo Behaviouralis, man as guided by his ‘behavior plasticity’, driven to behave differently from expected stereotypes with over 104 documented biases across social, memory, beliefs and decision making.

At its heart, behavioural marketing is driven by this behaviour plasticity.

Given this new foundation, we marketers need a new method, a new approach and a new language. Thankfully, there is a lot we can learn and use from government organizations have studied consumer behavior for policy reasons in areas as diverse as healthcare, taxation and transportation.

And, for those impatient among us, this is what it drills down to – all behavioural strategy is a function of three levers. Involvement, Commitment and Action.

The first of the three, ‘Involvement’ understands that any behaviour vacillates between two modes of thought: The fast, auto-pilot, instinctive, emotional Low Involvement mode and the deliberative, reflective logical, slow, High Involvement mode. Daniel Kahneman articulates this much more comprehensively as ‘System 1’ and ‘System 2’ in his award winning book, ‘Thinking. Fast and Slow’. What level of involvement do consumers show in your category? 

‘Commitment’ says that all behaviours can be immediate or postponed. Behavioural scientists articulate this as hot or cold conditions. And the gap between them is defined as the empathy gap. A classical illustration of the empathy gap is, when in love (hot condition), it is difficult to see how it is to not be in love. What commitment state is your consumer/shopper in?

Lastly, ‘Action’ recognizes that the marketer may wish to reinforce existing behaviour norms or challenge them to create new norms that are favorable to the marketer.

These three behavioural levers of involvement, commitment and action are the new 4P’s of behavioural marketing. They are the strategic decisions to maximize every revenue generating activity, basis the marketer’s objectives and shopper focus along the path to purchase.

I have been  putting this framework through its paces over the last twelve months with varying degrees of success. And now, I would urge you to share your own learning and join me in this third revolution for a truly Good Morning.