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Can India Inc. Build Global Brands?

The question is not whether Indian companies have the capability to build global businesses i.e have appropriate products and price points to fulifl consumer needs in markets around the globe, with whatever is the most efficient way to supply to and serve these ma rkets. But of course this capability does exist across several industries, and there are many vibrant examples of this. But the question to debate is whether they have built or have the capability to build global brands. What’s the difference between brands and businesses? Brands are where you talk your business walk. Your customers and potential customers recognize your name and recall it whenever they think about the business arena you exist in. And firmly attach certain positive (and sometimes negative) rational and emotional benefits to the name, which travel with the name, no matter what category of products or services the name is attached to. […]

Buying Sales by Bribing Consumers

I was reading a very absorbing leaflet about what seemed to be a very good health supplement. It explained what the supplement contained, how totally natural and safe it was, how exactly it worked, why, the research evidence available; it was totally honest and completely professional in tone – all in all it was a great product and a superb piece of branding. Then, suddenly, it said on the last page “lucky draw – win a holiday to Goa”. Made me wonder about everything I had read and thought so far. A potential-to-win brand with a totally un confident brand owner! There is a disturbing trend of marketers of all hues, across all categories, to offer all manner of sops, almost all of the time, to get consumers to buy their products. Disturbing, because the dominant marketing logic of the day seems to be that when there is a slow […]

It is time for Version 2 of FMCG Marketing

The pundits (pun intended) at the Economic Times have said a lot these past few days about ‘vindis and levers of change’ culminating in the Saturday editorial “will reorganization do the trick at HLL”. I am not sure that is the fundamental question that needs to be debated. The reorganization signals continuity with change, and a renewed vote of majority share holder confidence in the old order (the new management team is the old management team, with some increases and decreases in roles, some departures, no outside additions, and certainly no dramatic experiments with organization structure, as far as one can see). What needs to be debated, is the more central issue facing the company, and indeed the category. As discussed in the editorial, the central issue seems to be that the once famed value advantage that HLL offered consumers, is eroding ( “value” defined simply as “Sum total of benefit […]

Supply Side Sluggishness?

We have watched and waited, this past decade, for the Indian consumer and for Consumer India to ’emerge’. As I have said before in this column, we have been, metaphorically speaking, waiting for Kalki, the next avatar of Vishnu, to come and rescue us. I am convinced that Kalki is already here, only we don’t recognize it. One frequent ‘waiting for Kalki’ question is “when will the per capita income of this country get to X, which is the magic number when consumption will ‘take off’. The depressing data answer to this question is that with the slow and steady income growth we will have, in about ten years, we will hit the 1000 USD per capita GDP number. But since everything we say of India the opposite is also true, the other answer is to look at the most aggressive, “we try hardest’ market of FMCG. Even as early […]

But Are Marketers Ready, Asks Rama Bijapurkar