AG Krishnamurthy: Of professors and practitioners

AGKSPEAK/ Advertising could benefit from marrying philosophy with practice

In my favourites' list,this fortnight, Surf has lived up to its name "" it has indeed, "Excel-ed" itself. Two executions "" one on TV and the other on radio particularly, are the ones I would like to write about. The one on TV is for the Surf Excel sachet and it uses a device that is so charmingly an Indian habit.

That is, using the kid as a medium of communication between the parents. And for a national brand such as Surf to find common hooks on a pan-Indian level must not have been easy. This "tapping into the country's sentiment" is what most impactful advertising is made up of.

The other Surf ad is a radio version of the "Jaayega, nahi jaayega" TVC. That was also an equally entertaining and successful TVC (I had talked about it in an earlier column) and I am pleased to note that they haven't let the ball drop on radio either.

It's quite unusual, because despite radio's growing popularity, not enough time and effort is spent on creating effective advertising for the medium.

More often than not, agencies do a routine plug of the TVC jingle to be played on radio. But the Surf team has cashed in on an Indian addiction "" Bollywood songs.

Even though the words remain the same, they have been adapted to popular hits "" what better way to seed the key selling proposition! Hats off to the Surf team for doing something different, without losing sight of their audience.

What I've learned
Of professors and practitioners
During Mudra's initial years I spent a lot of time on embracing theory. Fortunately for me, Mudra shared the same city as India's premier business school "" Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A).

So a lot of late nights were invested in the company of some of India's best business academicians. And this is a lesson I learnt from those interactions: real life advertising was a world away from what lay between the pages of an advertising and marketing manual.

A text book gave you very clear instructions on what should be done. Reality on the other hand is where you learnt how it all actually gets done.

In the early 1980s, one of IIM's professors was consulting for a company that wanted Mudra to advertise for concealed plumbing. The pipes apparently were top-of-the-rung, but I had one major misgiving "" they were concealed. My instinct told me that customers weren't too keen on what brand their "concealed" products were. They just wanted them to work.

However, my friend, the IIM professor, believed otherwise. Volumes of paper were brought forward to prove so. I patiently listened to the entire argument and realised that he was just not willing to acknowledge the customer's mindset. So, the dialogue ended there, with both sides agreeing to disagree.

It's a pity that two symbiotic professions such as these find it difficult to respect each other. Professors very often play a significant role in advertising and marketing breakthroughs. And they do get quite handsomely compensated in return.

We have Jagdish Seth, C K Prahalad and the late Sumantra Ghosal, to name a few, helping out the industry with their path-breaking contributions.

If we want similar contributions from our management campuses, we have to begin by treating our "gurus" with the dignity and respect that they deserve. Also it would definitely help if our professors stepped out of their cabins into the Great Indian Bazaar for a hands-on feel of what makes it tick.

If we could bridge this gap between philosophy and practice, it would inject a much-needed boost to India's marketing and communications disciplines.

Email : agkbrandconsult@yahoo.com