Author name: Shubranshu Singh

Modern culture is inconceivable without brands. The more brands proliferate and expand, the more the economic and socio–cultural model seems premised on brands being the engines of growth. There is often a co-existence of three types of brand marketing and consumer interactions because different brands have evolved at different pace and markets have embraced change at varying levels. The three approaches are: 1. The prescriptive 2. The identity builder that allows consumers to ‘architect themselves‘ 3. Abstracted and infused via a living culture platform Prescriptive When mass consumer goods became a reality in the late 19th and early 20th century, brands ensured standardization. Each consumer got the same product and equal meaning hence decision reflex was easy. The logic ran like this – ‘Z’ is a brand of face wash for oily skin. Jack has oily skin and needs face wash. Jack chooses ‘Z’. This direct neural connect should not to be taken lightly. The bulk of dominant global FMCG brands were born in exactly this mode in the first five decades of the 20th century. Marketers thought of their craft as a methodical informational and recognition building science. When Stan Resor arrived at J. Walter Thompson in the 1920s and began to apply scientific management to marketing he also simultaneously hired John B.Watson to establish how emotional stimulus could manage consumer actions. This project was co-opted in various ways by Rosser Reeves, Leo Burnett, and David Ogilvy. Whether they were USP advocates, or behaviouralists, the idea that consumer desires could be manufactured and then guided to closure via repetitive single point advertising flourished for a long time. In America, this began to fail by the 1960s. Brands as bricks to build oneself As the world of brands became cluttered and complex, the cultural primacy of dominant brands started to diminish. Owning cognitive territory was no longer enough. Mental recollection and physical distribution didn’t suffice anymore. Madison Avenue then collaborated with brand leaders to own the process by which the pursuit of personal architecture was done by choice of brands. No matter what you wanted to be, you had to make a branded choice. The logic ran like this – Jack is the type of person that he is because he chooses – amongst several other brands the brand ‘Z’ of face wash. Why ‘Z’? Well, because Z was a choice made by ambitious, extroverted, confident young men. Jack would meet with romantic success, pick up a job, race ahead of peers while at work or leisure and his skin would stay young till he left this world! The chorus from this world of brands blaringly evangelized only one thing directly and via circumlocution – that to be socially acceptable, valued and dominant you must possess a plethora of brands. Legendary campaigns and iconic brand identities got minted in this era. The Marlboro Man, The man in the Hathway Shirt, Old Spice, Commander Whitehead for example were about establishing a White Anglo Saxon persona of tough masculinity, self-assurance and charm. But the stance was always that the consumer was the boss. Each choice is made freely. There are emotional and rational reasons behind the choice. Always, the consumer is King with sovereignty over choice. This was a deception. The reality was the marketer being more like a string puppeteer doing his thing. The consumers were guided (some use the word manipulated) – You needed brands to define you. Brands were the means to complete your world view. The world is nothing but a mosaic of experiences with brands. ‘People like Us’ vs. ‘People like them’ could be defined by one’s choice of brands and one brand repertoire vs. that of another. You become You as brands got chosen, consumed and established as part of your identity. Once this governing commandment of socio-cultural life was swallowed and digested, the rest became easy. Omniscient and omnipresent brands ensured universally acknowledged meanings for themselves. Consumers saluted the authority of these brands to define them and organize their thoughts and feelings. From badge to social movement As multinational brands travelled across the world a few things happened. First the cultural norm got challenged. Western life was not the lens through which people saw their reality magnified. In fact, it became weird and distorted at times. This dissonance meant that reflection, rationalization, resistance and defiance grew on part of consumers. Branding could no longer cue tastes in authoritarian ways. Much essence was lost in translation. Again Madison Avenue pioneers saw this coming. Bill Bernbach, George Lois, Mary Wells began an alternate communication paradigm at DDB. This was extended and strengthened by Lee Clow, Dan Wieden (Los Angeles and Portland respectively – notice how the compass turns 180 degrees). They all worked to create authenticity. To indulge in brand – consumer interactions without commercialization. Not to be perceived as self-seeking but truly motivated. The higher levels of brand marketing became hereafter an attempt to create culture or to resolve intense cultural tensions. Cause and Purpose entered marketing language. Apple’s rebellious creativity and Dove’s campaign for real beauty are all fruits of the same tree. The idea of marketing inciting movements was derived from cultural source material. Life on the roads became the inspiration. This work goes on… It is amazing that marketers continue to dominate cultural and social norm. Their ability to mutate and survive makes them special. Expansion, new media, fragmentation, the contradictions of the new economy and rise of Asian alternatives in cultural dominance have weakened the marketers’ stranglehold. Therefore, the next 20 years will be about honestly contributing to culture and appealing to a universal human consciousness. Purpose precedes profit. Therein lies marketing nirvana. https://www.exchange4media.com/advertising-news/guest-column-marketing-absolution-build-culture-not-brands-shubhranshu-singh-89373.html

Across the leading economies of the world, economic nationalism is being resurrected and globalisation is being looked at askance. The sovereign right of a nation state to act, and its conflict with the obligations of various multilateral agreements, is at the top of the agenda for political action. Brexit to ‘Trump Tariffs,’ the world is in ferment. The topmost economic entities of the world are as many corporations as nations. These are large businesses that can withstand shocks across multiple national reversal and tide over downturns because of brand strength. Multinational, transnational, multi-local, global; call them by any name but they are dominant in world economic flows. They rule consumer minds and leverage their preference. India, given its emergent status as a top five world economy, with amongst the highest growths in the world, is an aberration. We have no global brands of any consequence. Legions of much-feted marketers who are amongst the best in the world have not made one global Indian brand possible. Certainly none with any immediate recall or recognition. Thinking Indian? Think of the Taj Mahal, Snake charmers and Yoga! Why is this the case? Indian talent has always served western brands. Our domestic market didn’t have strength enough to give sustenance to any international expansion for businesses and brands. Prior to 1991, we lived in a moribund economy where private businesses were fettered and starved for capital. But, I will come back to this later. Despite Indian talent ‘getting it’ and our capacity to export soft power; on the brands report card? a big cipher. Will we ever break away from the western brand building norm? Will our content, creativity, design and marketing services evolve enough to support an ‘India Outward’ brand building? Will our ‘engineer-MBA’ marketing armies surprise the world with flair, intuition, charm, creativity, style, taste and savoir-faire? At this point, let me address a contrarian point of view. In a global world should ‘Indian’ be important? For that matter, why wouldn’t a Range Rover or Tetley be deemed Indian? Why is provenance relevant? Is it not a mid 20th-century hangover? Does being “made anywhere” or “made as per global specs” not do the job? Why does a quintessential global brand like Apple have to say “Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in China”? Does Italian flamboyance, French finesse, German engineering, Japanese technology and American innovation really matter? Yes, it does. The irony is that the more we globalise, the more the rootedness and urge to belong becomes stronger. Sadly ‘West is best’ has meant stifled creative innovation and standardised product –centric or claim-centric communications steamrolled by Western brands into India, just as in 100 other markets. The scale is inimical to customisation. Sameness is a blight upon authenticity. Western brands and the Empire came hand in hand. They were the products of a mass production world enabled by the Industrial Revolution and fostered through the rise of affluence, media and literacy in Europe and America. Unilever, Colgate, P&G, Henkel, Nestle, Nabisco, Coca Cola, Pepsi, BAT – these were the creators of brands and brand cultures and the flag bearers of the Western way of life. Brands enhanced its desirability. When you opened a bottle of Coca Cola or wore Levis Jeans – you lived a bit of America. It will not be an exaggeration to say that even India doesn’t have many strong branded associations or attributions. Tourism, investment destination, Quality of industrial output – we have done little to build them. A bit of Goa-Kerala-Rajasthan and the Taj is not India. A bit of Bollywood is not Indian culture. Information Technology built wealth but not brands that could resist western influx. Little to nothing in textiles or fashion, nothing in foods or beverages, nothing in art or design although they all are large and flourishing. There are several global Indian businesses but no global Indian brands. Opportunistic expansion or being net economic buyers is not the same as brand creation, creative focus and domain excellence. Coming back – Why are we not a brand building people? We want the immediacy of profit: Brand stature or equity is not about immediate margin enhancement or jump in near-term sales. We lack a brand sensibility: It’s the concern of the entire organisation, even society. Instead, its left to marketing management alone. It demands discipline and persistence: Instead, we are whimsical, ad hoc and short termed. Inadequate knowledge and support system: There is no resource pool for the creation of Indian brands. Ignorance about India amongst global consumers: There is low awareness and low trust because of being unknown. Maybe, we ought to focus on one city, two industries and three brand categories. Maybe if we sharpen the nail, we can make do with even a light hammer. Maybe, within our subcultures are the resources for brands to build a myth of origin that claims authenticity. Maybe one day we will get a genuine "India mystique." To paraphrase Nehru; maybe, one midnight hour, an Indian brand will also make a tryst with its destiny and to India, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new; it shall pay its reverent homage and bind itself afresh to her service.

Provocation is hardly one’s style but the truth needs to be inquired after. Can you mention five brands in India that have been built relying on social media? How about three? Not even one? Hmm. What a long time a decade seems to be in the frenzied rush of marketing. Recall how digital and social was the new gale force blowing us forward. The World Wide Web as a phenomenon itself was described by Sir Tim Berners –Lee as “an interactive sea of shared knowledge …made of the things we and our friends have seen, heard, believe or have figured out”. It was portended that a new breed of creative would emerge. Extinction seemed imminent for the legacy agency world. A suite of readily available technologies would come shrink wrapped and place your branded content throughout the social sphere for willing consumers to encounter. “And I said to myself…what a wonderful world!” The futurists said the future had arrived. Buzz without virality was deemed improbable. Every meme had the potential to create brand equity. And what is the report card we have in hand? A poor ‘C’ is quite fair per my reckoning. This is despite the boom in the digital ecosystem, hundreds of millions of keen young consumers, cheapest possible access via near ubiquitous mobile phones and steady support from brand builders. The issue emerged because of a noxious duo – expert-itis and department-itis. Expert-itis is wedded to legacy. They have a family of old breadwinner relics. Almost the entire brigade of decision makers who evaluated and opined on social media for brand building were of the generation born from the early 1960s to early 1980s and I am indeed no exception. Marketing was learned at a gentler pace. There was a network of peers – mad men and media men, strategists, business operators. They owned the apparatus. No outsider could come past the gates till these peers had signed off on admittance. Everything was Germanic in its pre planning and narrow as a needle in scope. Ah, and for the most part things happened one at a time. The arrival of any ordinary crowd into creative development and dissemination was simply anti –gravity. When regular consumers got this power all hell broke loose. Yet everyone was pretending to be in the know. Nobody had a good enough understanding. Vigorous nodding soon lapsed into a resigned shaking of the head sideways. The crowds were take over….we were all on thin ice. Time for the final goodbyes. But it never did materialise quite as claimed. Why? Because, when the new media evangelists broke the fences and became the most feted folks at the party, they forgot that brands need to entertain and inform with intelligence. Social was only a platform not manna from heaven. And as luck would have it the demographic explosion happened alongside lighting up of hundreds of millions of smart phones. The mix up was of Kumbh Mela scale. The consequence is that the old apparatus is pretending to know how to talk to Gen Z consumers who have lived their entire lives online. This is department-itis. Without exception, social media mavens remained the flock of the marketing department. This was a revolution that ought to have engaged HR, Ops, Customer Care, Sales and the CEO. But everyone was lassoing the beast to tether it at the marketing gates. What are the obvious manifestations of Expert-itis and Departmental-itis ? • Inability to grapple with new era story telling Short video and small screen is it. Long form needs a mutation. A constant refresher. Jung’s primal archetypes won’t change. The form has to adapt to the substance. Desktop, email, banners, textual advertising are paleolithic. • Thinking that Self-praise is content Brands without any polarity or opinion are like Tofu. Collective opinion discounts and reacts against self-advertisement even if individuals may politely suffer it. Listen actively. Think customisable chatbots. Think of solicitation for feedback. • Imagining that Community building will get done via gimmicks If it is something seen before and will live a small life span, just don’t do it. • Unable to do stuff Fresher and Faster Ephemeral imagery, video is what works. Make your audience collaborate. Let the story meander but let them own their story with pride. • Not getting that consumer clusters are creating their own magic The audience does most things better than the brands in terms of spontaneity and topicality. Social media is flat earth whereas traditional media is about privilege, control and commerciality. But that’s still where brand originated content comes from – the old media mindset. As ridiculous as a man wearing a parrot green three-piece suit for beach volleyball. Be with the culture. • Thinking that Influencer is Influenza Stars, sports icons, musicians, fashion models, rich and richer….they have following and evoke interest. Celebrity comes packaged with mass curiosity and craving. But it is Katy Perry and not the Pope and mass following doesn’t mean there is a rub off on the brand. It happens only with genuine resonance. • Treating Brand Purpose as a tactic Do it small if there is no grand purpose but don’t airbrush. Don’t put the right angle on every mugshot. Time is a stress variable when it comes to puffery and lack of authenticity. Show it as it is. As the consumer will have it. Brand promise cannot be on puppet strings. In conclusion, Experts and departmental men (Yes, mostly men !) have failed the test thus far. Engagement and stewardship cannot be euphemisms even for well-intended deceit. Manipulation is toxic. No matter how well your brand hypocrisy is camouflaged, it will be discovered. Till then all the department folks and experts can keep designing the Emperor’s new clothes.

No matter which public or private enterprise you work for, I can confidently claim that you are spending a good portion of your working life in meetings. The very concept of formal organizational work is unimaginable without the central presence of meetings. This centrality has been strengthened despite everything that ought to have logically weakened its stranglehold e.g. globalization and emergence of multinational teams, technology and its ability to enhance efficiency and communications and the recognition of the individual contributor. One reason is that humans have survived because of an ability to socialise and collaborate. I imagine that roaming on Africa’s plains, our evolutionary ancestors must have rushed to a huddle every time a predator or prey appeared on the scene. Meetings are in our evolutionary encoded behaviour. Members of the subspecies of corporate homo sapiens are also hierarchical beings where those at the top of the totem pole gain comfort and self-esteem with the modern day version of the durbar. But this is not to dilute the belief that those who are involved in something together must deliberate and decide. And whilst there may be several options to do so, its most manifest form, despite mutations, is what we call a meeting. Personally, I do believe that one-half of meetings that do get convened, waste time. Meetings and their prescribed quorum also have a way of perpetuating themselves. Meetings serve as testing grounds for political sentiment, rubber stamps and echo chambers. They allow individuals or groups to put diversionary tactics into play, operationalise dilatory manoeuvres and excuse evasion of responsibility. These are but a few amongst their many value destroying ends. I concede that a meeting serves to unify and align the quorum. The College of Cardinals, a Parliamentary Committee, the group of G-8 Nations, Army Commanders, Members of Parliament and many more such affiliations are actually derived from being in respective meetings in permanence. Their affiliation is their entitlement to meet and their being in the quorum. In a business, role separation makes inter-functional co-ordination essential and surely meetings do serve to get the different units represented together or apart. But even here, one notices the form and ceremony of the meetings often substitutes for any real decision-making capacity, this is the essence of my critique. Meetings are camouflage for the intentions of those who are powerful. Let us consider decision processes as an example. Have you encountered situations where the presentation of facts, forceful opinions or even an epiphany has resulted in a vote? In the brute majority of cases, the chair gets to decide while the others merely opine, substantiate and debate. Thus the assembly is, in fact, an auxiliary and the words are cheap. Another way to confirm the futility, as well as value destructive nature of routine meetings, is to ask if there are folks who would actually like more meetings. Tell me when you find them. The burden of meetings is that it completely throws your day job and deliverables off track. All you do is what is required for the meeting. Let us imagine a divisional boss who calls a meeting with 20 odd managers attending a meeting for half of the day on every Monday! That’s almost 100 hours of productive work time bled away on the first day of the week. The bulk of this time will be inevitably spent listening to things where you were neither expected to contribute and whether your opinion, if any, matters. Yet the assumption is that everyone is aligned and immersed on a weekly basis. Open your mouth “Ha Ha Ha !” Another patented meeting is the public inquisition. Here, the target is some unfortunate karmic accident victim of the week who is picked upon by the boss and the quorum is present only to make the spectacle genuinely awe-inspiring and later becomes the breaking news of the office. Did I mention the data feeder meetings? Here every point made is suspect and a platoon of data persons are at hand to cross-check, verify, corroborate or dispute as the case may be. Sigh! the impossibility of vetting the data as a part of a pre-read because after all, meetings are important and the platoon is there to service the exclusive data drawing prerogative of the boss. Then there is the staged meeting with a contingent of the better-dressed consultants. Their arrival and entrenchment announce career ending finales for many with “It must’ve been love but it’s over now…” playing in the background. Sins of meetings: 1) Unstructured accelerators for confusions because of the absence of any agenda or clear pre-work 2) Presentation Bias: What is said must look good and sound good and ideally resonate with what is in the mind of those who can decide. Any business utility is secondary. 3) Decision forum which becomes a discussion forum only to end in an exhausted capitulation to what is, in fact, pre-decided. 4) No recap or reading of minutes in the end. The minutes come massaged or altered away from the spirit of the discussion. A resolution has then to be taken offline, gets enmeshed in emails and has to wait until the next meeting with lesser progress than expected in the interim. 5) Idea and decision killers: The trained gladiators let loose, these are the praetorian guards who then line up for succession roles on the corporate ladder. 6) Deference to hierarchy: No contention of ideas. Allowance of time by rank. The decision by the highest tax payer. 7) Respect for time and agreed duration – Huh? 8) Certainly, the number and duration of meetings cannot be in the linear proportion to the increase in business, therefore, even when the institutional mandate is to rejoice in holdings meetings, surely greater efficiency can be hoped for. No topic should be brought before a meeting of business leaders which has not been discussed and circulated with the functions and departments concerned. 9) Interdepartmental angst must be settled inter-departmentally. 10) Unfortunately, meetings become occasions for ambushes,