“What does the consumer want? What does the market want?”
“Who the hell is the consumer? Where is he? Is he listening?”
“Why will he buy this stupid vanilla product, that too a twentieth ‘me too’?”
“Why can’t they make an innovative product instead?”
“Isn’t the idea already done?”
“Slice of life? Isn’t that too generic?”
“Idea! Our ad will be more emotional!”
“Yeah! Have you seen the latest Voda ad? Can we better that?”
“No problem. We will hire the same director. By the way, what is the budget?”
“Where is that one-line brief? You call this a brief?”
Funnily, it is the space cadets, our creative chaps, who ask the most basic and logical questions before they begin their work.
On the face of it, these questions might sound innocuous and even boring, but believe me, they send shivers down the most hardened marketing professional’s spine. I know many an advertising professional who has proceeded on sick leave rather than attempt to answer these questions. Little wonder then, most creative guys are loved and hated for the same reason.
The creative guy’s pleasure and pain is his talent. That indefinable something that sometimes spews out great ideas, which occasionally also makes a lot of sense. Today, companies are also looking for that indefinable magic quality that will impart an everlasting ethereal aura around their brands. The classical pull and push strategy.
The pull is emotional, the push is rational. The problem starts when you run out of clear tangible advantages. How often have I heard some senior marketing people say, “Guys, we need to own the mind/emotional space of the consumer”!
Between the lines, it actually reads this way, “My product is very boring and I have no idea how it is different from other products in the category. So give me a great idea that will keep me out of this feature-to-feature comparison nonsense every day.”
Not surprising at all. When I last checked, there were 80 models or variants of four-wheelers belonging to 20 big automobile brands. In the two-wheeler segment, there were eight big manufacturers contributing 70 to 80 motorcycle/scooter models. Things become even more crowded on the FMCG shelves. Over 150 companies fight for space with more than 1,000 brands. In fact, just the top 10 companies sell more than 500 brands! And this is just the tip of the iceberg…
Man, we are surely frying the consumers’ brains.
On top of this, some categories have their own unique limitations. Take life insurance, for example. All insurance products are tailored according to IRDA (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority) laws. To make matters worse, nobody wants to talk of death and mishaps in our culture. We are a hopelessly optimistic race. For us, bad things always happen to others.
Therefore, the only option left is appropriating a generic value or insight to the brand which is optimistic and hopeful. Any insurance guy will tell you the most difficult thing to sell in India is the pure term insurance.
When we pitched for the HDFC Standard Life Insurance business, the brief that was given to us by Suresh Mahalingam, the erstwhile marketing and sales head, and Deepak Satwalekar, CEO and managing director, was simple and to the point: “We are the seventh player entering the market. We are a well-reputed and respected financial institution and we need to make an impact in the already cluttered and confusing category called life insurance. Our values of trust, honesty and transparency should reflect in all our communication objectives and instruments.”
Back at the agency, the enormity of the task dawned on us as we sat facing the facts and the figures of the category.
ICICI Prudential had done a brilliant job showcasing its pension plan. The communication captured a simple, beautiful insight “Main kaam se retire karoonga, zindagi se nahin” (I will retire from work, not life). Combined with a clever media plan, it had captured the minds and hearts of common people. On the other side of the spectrum sat the leviathan LIC (state-owned Life Insurance Corporation) with its heritage of 50-plus years. Besides, being a government entity, it owned the word “trust” unequivocally across the country. Aviva stood for leading a more fruitful life in old age. In this war of usurping generic values there was very little left for us to build on.
We discussed and came up with multiple ideas but somehow all of them sounded like some campaign or the other. I felt a very simple insight was eluding us.
The inspiration came from an incident I recollected. One day when my dad was getting up from a chair, I involuntarily reached out to help. The old man turned around like a tiger and rebuked, “I may be old but I am not a cripple.”
His independence and self-respect were so important to him.
This became the basis for my script of the old man and his family at the train station commercial for HDFC Standard Life. Life insurance is about financial independence. It is about preserving self-respect, a value that is handed from one generation to the other. Hence, “Sar utha ke jiyo” (live with your head held high). When we shared this concept with the client, they unanimously empathised and narrated similar events from their lives. More important, it was a perfect match for their company’s philosophy. After the launch, it was immensely successful and managed to create disruption in the market. In fact, it made the competition change gears too.
Cellular telephony is a category that is like a humongous chameleon. It morphs and manifests itself differently to the user every day. Handsets, like computers, are becoming loaded with more and more applications. The memory is getting larger and larger. With nanotechnology, the extremely complex and powerful digital world has compressed itself and now resides on your phone. The technology for service providers has jumped leaps and bounds. Voice clarity, network strength and affordability are no more differentiators for a brand. They are now a constant.
Cell phones have already become an extension of our psyche. The day isn’t far away when we might have an organic version of the device implanted under our skins. The United States Army Special Forces are already using the technology.
Against this backdrop, Aircel COO Gurdeep Singh and CMO Rahul Saighal, along with their team, briefed us prior to Aircel’s pan-India launch: “The cellular category is sitting on the threshold of change. Innovation is the key. We will provide technology and service that will bring positive change to the consumer’s life. Democratisation of technology is the keyword. Everyone should have access to it. It is time to move on. We have decided to launch with Pocket Internet which will be followed soon by many other innovative products. Our communication should be simple, honest, sharp and tangible.”
Mahender Singh Dhoni was the brand ambassador. The task was to demonstrate the potential of Internet on mobile in a way that was comprehensible to every segment. Easier said than done! It meant a demonstration of the different features and their relevant usage. The problem was if we failed to create a relevant context or weave a story around the concept, it would look like a tacky teleshopping sales job. Besides, there was also a fear of information overload. We set the story around a simple incident set in a cricket locker room. The match is cancelled and young lads in the team want to make good use of their spare time by going to a nearby hill station. Dhoni, their captain and inspiration, becomes the enabler by using the Pocket Internet feature to search, book and pay for all their needs.
Not your usual mushy stuff. Aside from establishing features, as the research indicated, it also captured the emotional bonding and bonhomie between Dhoni’s team and him. The enthusiastic response to Aircel Pocket Internet opened up a world of possibilities and has set the course for the brand’s journey in future.
To cut a long story short, most big ideas are often deceptively simple and found in everyday life. Quite often they get buried under inane jargon, number crunching and the politics of the environment. A good insightful idea can cut through budget, media clutter and cerebral acrobatics. It shines like a beacon of hope. Most important, everybody wants a piece of it. But there is a rider to this. One needs to have the gift of vision to recognise the gem in a heap of rubbish. Sometimes the rubbish comes layered with great execution and frills.
Trust your instinct. Honesty is the key. After all, isn’t this all about empathy?
It is a tough job but it is fun.
