Taking Charge of Perception
India My Land

Taking Charge of Perception

Everyone I discussed this piece with was of the opinion that it was not the thing to write about. In addition to being politically incorrect, it was not really my business, and what good would it do to pontificate from an armchair? However fools rush in where angels fear to tread and I have taken courage from Arun Maira’s earlier piece on this page, asking “is the business of business only business”? I would like to write to all of us in business and say, can we figure out what we can do, individually and collectively, to improve the way we communicate about our country to the outside world and take charge of the way events relating to us get positioned in the outside world? I don’t think we deserve to be painted as the next Gaza strip, where no one in their right minds should want to locate a […]

June 17, 2002 0 Comments
India Needs a Communication Strategy
India My Land

India Needs a Communication Strategy

We have all watched with a mixture of upset and grudging admiration, the way Musharraf communicates to the world, via the media, far better than the way India does. While we clearly don’t want to be like him or say the same things as him, surely an equally forceful, equally unambiguous, equally engaging and attention getting communication from India would help us in the eyes of the watching world? We have a collective national disdain for what we call ‘media warfare’ and ‘spin doctoring’. But it is a fact of life that communication received through the idiot box today shapes perceptions of not only idiots but of wise men, as well. And shapes views not only on the issue at hand but leaves a residual impression about the brand that is talking, which in turn shapes the way future communication from the brand is received. Think about the communication from […]

August 14, 2001 0 Comments
Repositioning the India Brand
India My Land

Repositioning the India Brand

Here we are, 54 years old and a decade after liberalization  fighting for our ‘rightful’ place in the world, distressed with the world’s perception of the India brand. Sure there are a lot of things wrong with us, but there is enough right with us that we are not getting credit for. Our hypothesis is that this is because we have not proactively managed our brand perception, in a scientific and focused manner. Our brand speaks in many voices, sending out mixed messages, suffering from not being anchored around a clearly articulated brand vision or positioning statement that all spokespersons of the brand have internalized. Worse still, we think about and talk about our brand using a set of descriptors that are obsessively ‘inside – out’ and ‘product centric’, like “the world’s largest democracy”, “a billion people”, “a functioning anarchy”, “unity in diversity”, “having an ancient heritage” etc. If this were a […]

August 14, 2001 0 Comments
Rescripting the India Brand
India My Land

Rescripting the India Brand

The image of the India brand in the eyes of the outside world is poor, and like everything else about India, fragmented. The ‘Political India’ variant of the brand is not powerful enough to get us our security council seat, or brand Pakistan a rogue state. The ‘Economic India’ variant is not powerful enough to be the unquestioned destination for global investment, or be unequivocally acknowledged as a future engine of world business growth. A few infotech entrepreneurs are improving the image of “Economic India’, but the world seems to perceive ‘Infotech India’ as yet another variant, and is not transferring its goodwill on to the parent brand. Similarly the ‘Well Educated Indian’ brand has an image that we can be proud of, but as Swaminathan Aiyer wrote, Indians win, but India loses. The sadness is that anybody else having the ‘product features’ that we do (large chunks of the […]

August 14, 2000 0 Comments
Demon Slayer and Beautiful Beloved
India My Land

Demon Slayer and Beautiful Beloved

The marketing person in me admires Devi, who dispenses knowledge, militancy or money depending on which altar her devotee feels like workshipping on that day! Her brand variants are endless, and clearly differentiated. No lemon or lychee flavour marginal difference between them. She wields one ldnd of power because she is Mahishasura Mardini, the demon slayer, and a clearly different one because she is Madhusudana Kamini, Vishnu’s beautiful beloved, on which basis she extracts a lot of favours from him. She is the stoic Parvati and the food giver Annapoorna who, when slighted, can go on strike and make even the most powerful come to her, begging bowl in hand. She is the emotionally blackmailing, fasting-without even eating a leaf-Anarna. I always wonder though how she manages the variants of Mahishasura Mardini and Madhusudana Kamini without accidentally using the wrong variant for the wrong market. I also love the fact […]

July 15, 2000 0 Comments
© 2023 Rama Bijapurkar, All Rights Reserved.
Powered by ADKRAGE