Lalita-ji to Savita-bhabhi

03 Apr, 2022

One day after and a full month before Christmas 2008, India lost its innocence. 26/11 happens. Terrorists storm Mumbai and several of its key heritage properties, kill many, physically maim more and maim psychologically a whole generation of Indians altogether.
 
26/11 in many ways was modern India’s loss of innocence.  India has been through many of these, but this one set of events that hogged the limelight of modern India through satellite television beams that went on and on endlessly, was an epochal point of what I would like to call ‘ India’s loss of innocence’.
 
Loss of innocence in one realm led to loss of innocence in all others. Events such as these are a cascade. What affects one domain affects another seamlessly till it touches every part of life. At times in overt measure. At times subliminally.
 
Marketing in the year 2009 was surely touched by this loss of innocence. A lot that happened in Marketing 2009 has a touch of this loss of innocence. Categories became more aggressive than ever. Many new things happened in marketing year 2009. Let me trace a few dominant trend-streaks that typified the year we have just about locked, shunted and buried. Let me look at a few. A few trends that typified the year gone by:
 
1. Society-conscious branding:
Everyone wanted a piece of the action. Brands had experimented with CSR advertising in the past. Brands had attempted waking up people’s conscience on this and that. 2009 however saw a piece of resurgent and solid action in this space.

Brands adopted CSR advertising, CSR branding and CSR activation in full measure.  Tata Tea took its “Jaago Re” campaign to a high decibel of activity. Multiple sets of creatives had the entire nation sit up and take-note. Voting in an election was made a heroic thing to do. A responsible thing to do.

Society-centric branding seems to have worked for the brand for sure. Brand-salience is high in a market that is essentially cluttered with me-too offerings that clamor to distinguish themselves on benefits functional and emotional. Tata Tea rose above it all. It climbed Maslow’s hierarchy of needs fast and quick. From the functional benefit of taste, it had moved on to the myriad emotional benefits of drinking tea. Tired of it all, the brand took the one bold step of fast-tracking its social responsibility campaign. 'Jaago-re' was an excellent vehicle that had the brand climbing right atop the peak of Maslow, where the brand had consumers self-actualizing themselves into a state of awakening. The fit was right. Tea is a wake-up beverage and what better way than ‘Jaago re’ to say it all?
 
The point remains. Brands that use CSR cues and brands that use softer ways to market rather than the overt and hard sell way to the consumer are going to be that much more appreciated in the long run. Tata Tea has made a start.

Others that took this route include the Times of India group with its excellent “Lead India “ and “Teach India” campaigns. Add to this list the efforts of Idea Cellular. In many ways the campaigns of teaching an entire nation through the phone, the Unique ID project of the government of India and a campaign to knit a wounded society together had their beginnings in the creative thoughts of CSR advertising formats created and run by Idea the brand.
 
2.Acceptance of Open society:
In a nation where we have had a history of sanitary napkin advertising not being allowed on prime-time slots on Doordarshan, and condom advertising being relegated to late-night slots when children are meant and assumed to be asleep, loss of innocence also meant bold new creatives.

Unwanted 72 became a much-wanted piece of advertising this year as the story of the I-Pill competed with Unwanted 72. OTC contraception pills took open routes to market themselves, as solutions to cater to the needs of a young, aggressive and promiscuous society.

Even though parents still refused to accept the active sex lives of their young children, marketers and advertisers took it out there. After all the country is about the young. 54% of the population is below the age of 25 and 72% below the age of 35.  The marketing story had to prioritize the needs, wants, desires and hidden aspirations of the young.

Article 377 came into public focus and society commenced accepting alternate life-styles. Advertising had more and more people who looked like a mix of both the sexes rather than just the two boring old sexes of male and female with boring old tastes as old as the hills. Expect more of this in the coming year. Expect to see same-sex couples in advertising, just as you might as well wait for the three-cornered family. And the single parent for sure.
 
Simultaneously older categories looked nice in their advertising executions. Sanitary napkins which have for decades depended on the product, which does not look too elegant, and on blotches of yucky red and blue ink for demonstration purposes on mass media television, suddenly morphed.
 
Sanitary napkins started looking nicer, morphing into slippers that danced in gay abandon and umbrellas that danced in the rain as well.

The days are changing. Loss of innocence also meant Britannia Bourbon asking you to “Indulge your dark side”, just as Hide& Seek ‘s Milano had a Hrithik Roshan make love to a lovely damsel as biscuits were baking. Even the humble biscuit baked in a dull and dreary factory got sensuous and sexy.
 
3. Social-network marketing went bananas:
Loss of innocence meant loss of innocence both in the physical and virtual world. Marketers realized this year, more than in any other, that the virtual world was grabbing consumers fast with fury. Digital marketing was emerging to be a quick and rugged way to the heart of the consumer.

Websites and blogs became passé and long-winded for the digital consumer in a hurry. Communication formats morphed on the Internet from long-winded stories to 140 character messages. Twitter was the brand hero of the year. And Shashi Tharoor its un-paid and politically bruised brand ambassador.

Facebook, Orkut, Fropper, SecondLife, You-tube and more had something for everyone. People led double lives. At times triple lives with triple avatars. One for the physical world and another for the virtual. Consumers in urban India led vicarious lives through their online personalities. The process of digital schizophrenia is now just about complete. The new reality in consumer markets.

4. Let’s kill one another marketing:
Loss of innocence also meant a very aggressive marketing stance to be adopted by companies.  It meant survival with every tool of survival there is to grab. The slow-down that affected India in the first three quarters of the year in particular had many a player playing the aggressive price-game.
 
Bell-weather brands from the best marketing stables did a complete price re-engineering exercise to ensure that the distance of their branded offerings was not too far from the commodity in the same category. Price-equations got adjusted. Marketers fought battles with one another on the basis of aggressive price.

The aviation market saw rock-bottom price of tickets despite the price of ATF on an up swing. Aviation players killed one another very successfully this year. Air Deccan that had started the price wars first as a low-cost player died first. And then every premium airline morphed to become a low-cost player in some way or the other. Business Class seats got wiped off totally on many a sector. Jet Airways morphed into a Jet Konnect that sold meals on its flights just as an Air Deccan used to. Jet now has three Avatars, a full service Jet Airways, a low-cost Jet Konnect and a Jet Lite that comes as a legacy from the airline that died early still, Sahara.
 
Just as the aviation sector killed every brand there was, with bleeding bottom-lines and extended lines of credit going awry, telecom just about started on the same track.
 
Loss of innocence in telecom meant grappling with a reality. Newer licensees were starting operations from scratch, number portability was round the corner, and it was time for the price wars to start.
 
This very robustly growing category (in terms of width) with 15 million new connections (and that’s the size of the Sikh population in the country) per month entered the price-war phase in 2009. The last quarter of the calendar year 2009 has seen operators with offers of 29 paise per minute. What a far cry from the regime of Rs.16 per minute in the nascent days of mobile telephony in India.
 
As the sector of telecom goes for the jugular of every Tom, Dick and Harish in the business, expect a complete loss of innocence in this category. This is what I call “Let’s kill one another” marketing.
 
5. Loss of Innocence in front of everyone:
 
Voyeuristic India is just about happening. The year saw Rakhi Sawant going through a 'Swayamvar' process. ‘Rakhi ka Swayamvar’. I hear  Rahul Mahajan is next in line.
 
Realty shows became a rage as loss of innocence in India meant a voyeuristic India watching the comfort and discomfort of them all in their drawing rooms. “Sacch ka Saamna” hit national headlines and entered a debate in Parliament as well. Otherwise very innocent looking housewives entered the question chair and confessed gory details that had an entire nation sweating. Loss of innocence meant saying it all in front of everyone else. For a price.
 
Realty shows of every kind that make you dance, sing, live in crazy houses, do crazy feats like letting scorpions all over your face and body, accept crazy physical challenges, beg to be released from jungles, judge you in courts and twenty other voyeuristic formats happened. Loss of innocence in front of everyone who has a television set and a cable connection to watch.
India surely morphed in 2009. From the era of Surf’s Lalitaji to the era of the now-banned Savita-bhabhi, India morphed. From Laitaji to Savita-bhabhi! A complete loss of innocence.
 
Cheers to 2009 then. The author is a brand-strategy specialist & CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. Email: ceo@harishbijoorconsults.com

Publisher: BGEdit | Business Gyan