Journey's end

I remember train journeys before air-conditioned coaches became commonplace. I'd press my nose against the bars on the window, peer into the distance, and try to fill my senses with all the sights and smells. Something interesting would flash by, and I'd contort myself even further, craning my neck to catch another glimpse. More often than not, I would fail and sink back into my seat with a sigh. Only to sit up again the next minute as another tantalising view zipped past.

Reading Ramanujam Sridhar's One Land, One Billion Minds transported me right back to a first-class compartment of the GT Express (our preferred mode of travel for the carved-in-stone annual holiday to Tamil Nadu). Not just because of the frequent references to Madras (oh, all right then, Chennai), but also because his writing style is quite like a fast train. He speeds past smaller topics, some of which have the potential to be immensely interesting, and then screeches to a halt at the bigger, more obvious stations.

To be fair, that's not so much Sridhar's fault as it is the shortcoming of the book's editors, and the form in which it is published. To a large extent, One Land, One Billion Minds is a compilation of the articles the former adman has written in his newspaper columns, "The Third Umpire" and "Ad speak". Which is why thoughts and anecdotes sometimes seem repetitive and all-too-familiar. That's a lot like the journey to Madras; by day two, all villages in interior Andhra and Tamil Nadu would look unremarkably identical. Four hundred pages was perhaps a bit excessive for this book.

Still, One Land... is based on an admirable premise. Ask virtually any marketer in the country today, and he will wax lyrical about the huge opportunity that India represents "" the teeming middle class, a billion consumers, the urge to splurge.... But how many brand managers actually understand their customer? Do they realise what motivates people to choose one product over another? It's clearly a more complex equation than one of mere product attributes and price, but what are these other factors that determine whether a brand will succeed or fail? Unless companies"" and by association, their advertising agencies "" get the tangibles and intangibles right, they're going to find the road ahead very rough.

Sridhar offers examples, some mentioned in passing, others examined in greater detail. For instance, when Kellogg's entered India in the mid-1990s with its breakfast cereals, the market didn't snap, crackle and pop as expected. This was a nation used to a hearty, cooked breakfast and it wasn't going to switch to rice and corn flakes in a hurry. Still, Kellogg's persevered, educating customers and advertising aggressively. It worked "" people were now willing to give the breakfast cereal a try, and were rushing to get themselves bags of cornflakes. Only, more often than not, it wasn't Kellogg's. The American company had wet nursed the Indian market, only to see it being lured away by local brands that were available at a fraction of the price.

On the other hand, there's Titan Industries, a superlative example of a company that created a category and then established dominion over it. It did such a good job of pushing the idea of watches as desirable gifts, that gifting now accounts for over half of Titan's sales.

But communication is not just about advertising, warns Sridhar. Every contact with the customer is a moment of truth, and unless the brand is etched all the way to the bone, companies will lose""sometimes all it takes to create a dissatisfied customer is a misspelt name or an indifferent customer care executive.

Extensively quoting ad gurus like David Ogilvy and Bill Bernbach, Sridhar's book isn't just about good ads and bad ads. He chugs along merrily while discussing branding and the relevance of being different, picks up speed when it comes to corporate branding and "technobranding", slows down to pick up passengers at advertising and PR (Richard Branson is held up as a shining example of effective brand communication), and then reaches his final destination: his inspirations, Frank Simoes and R K Swamy (with whom he began his career) and his take on the future of Indian advertising ("pray like mad", he advises succinctly).

Would I recommend this journey? Well, yes. An airplane may get you there faster, but for atmosphere, nostalgia and a touch of India-yana, you can't beat the railways.

ONE LAND, ONE BILLION MINDS

Ramanujam Sridhar
Productivity and Quality Publishing
Price: Rs 850; Pages: 400